She could not avoid a profound feeling of rancor toward her husband for having left her alone in the middle of the ocean. Everything of his made her cry: his pajamas under the pillow, his slippers that had always looked to her like an invalid’s, the memory of his image in the back of the mirror as he undressed while she combed her hair before bed, the odor of his skin, which was to linger on hers for a long time after his death. She would stop in the middle of whatever she was doing and slap herself on the forehead because she suddenly remembered something she had forgotten to tell him. At every moment countless ordinary questions would come to mind that he alone could answer for her. Once he had told her something that she could not imagine: that amputees suffer pains, cramps, itches, in the leg that is no longer there. That is how she felt without him, feeling his presence where he no longer was.
她无法摆脱隐藏在心底的怨恨，怨丈夫将她孤零零地遗弃在这汪洋大海之中。他的一切都会让她潸然落泪：枕头下的睡衣；那双在她看来只有病人才会穿的平底拖鞋；记忆里，她在床边梳头准备睡觉时，镜子深处的他脱掉衣服的情景，还有他皮肤的气味，在他死后还久久地留在她的皮肤上。无论正在做什么，她都可能会中途停下来，拍拍自己的额头，因为突然想起有什么事忘记告诉他了。她的脑子里每时每刻都会涌现出无数个日常问题，只有他才能回答。他曾经说过一件令她匪夷所思的事情：截肢后，患者仍能感受到已不存在的那条腿上的疼痛、痉挛和搔痒。这正如她失去他以后的感受，虽然他已经不在了，她却仍觉得他就在那里。
Fermina Daza could not have imagined that her letter, inspired by blind rage, would have been interpreted by Florentino Ariza as a love letter. She had put into it all the fury of which she was capable, her crudest words, the most wounding, most unjust vilifications, which still seemed minuscule to her in light of the enormity of the offense. It was the final act in a bitter exorcism through which she was attempting to come to terms with her new situation. She wanted to be herself again, to recover all that she had been obliged to give up in half a century of servitude that had doubtless made her happy but which, once her husband was dead, did not leave her even the vestiges of her identity. She was a ghost in a strange house that overnight had become immense and solitary and through which she wandered without purpose, asking herself in anguish which of them was deader: the man who had died or the woman he had left behind.
费尔明娜·达萨没有想到，她在一股无名邪火的驱使下写的那封信，竟会被弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨视作情书。信中，她倾泻了所有她能倾泻的愤怒，说了最残忍的话，以及最伤人乃至不公的诋毁。然而，在她看来，这些跟她所受的巨大侮辱相比，仍旧是微不足道的。这是她痛苦地驱除心中魔鬼的最后努力，试图以此适应她的新处境。她想找回自我，重获半个世纪奴仆般生活中被迫放弃的一切。那种生活无疑曾使她幸福，然而丈夫一死，她甚至无法找到自我的一点点痕迹。她像是别人家中的一个幽灵，漫无目的地游荡在一夜之间变得空阔而孤寂的房子里，不断痛苦地自问，究竟谁是亡者：是死去的丈夫，还是她这个留下来的人。
When she awoke on her first morning as a widow, she turned over in bed without opening her eyes, searching for a more comfortable position so that she could continue sleeping, and that was the moment when he died for her. For only then did it become clear that he had spent the night away from home for the first time in years. The other place where this struck her was at the table, not because she felt alone, which in fact she was, but because of her strange belief that she was eating with someone who no longer existed. It was not until her daughter Ofelia came from New Orleans with her husband and the three girls that she sat at a table again to eat, but instead of the usual one, she ordered a smaller, improvised table set up in the corridor. Until then she did not take a regular meal. She would walk through the kitchen at any hour, whenever she was hungry, and put her fork in the pots and eat a little of everything without placing anything on a plate, standing in front of the stove, talking to the serving women, who were the only ones with whom she felt comfortable, the ones she got along with best. Still, no matter how hard she tried, she could not elude the presence of her dead husband: wherever she went, wherever she turned, no matter what she was doing, she would come across something of his that would remind her of him. For even though it seemed only decent and right to grieve for him, she also wanted to do everything possible not to wallow in her grief. And so she made the drastic decision to empty the house of everything that would remind her of her dead husband, which was the only way she could think of to go on living without him.
当她在成为寡妇后的第一个早晨醒来，闭着眼睛在床上翻了个身，想找一个更舒服的姿势继续睡下去，就在这一刻，她才真正意识到他死了。也只有在这时，她才察觉到，这是他多年来第一次没有在家过夜。另一个触动她的情境是在餐桌前，但不是因为感到孤单，尽管事实的确如此，而是因为她奇怪地相信，自己正在同某个已不存在的人一起用餐。直到她女儿奥菲利娅跟丈夫带着他们的三个女儿一起从新奥尔良来了以后，她才再次来到餐桌前吃饭，但也没用以前一直用的那张桌子，而是换了一张她让人放在走廊里、小一些的临时餐桌。在此之前，她没有正经吃过一顿饭。饿的时候，她就随时走进厨房，把叉子伸进锅里，有什么就吃点什么，也并不用盘子，而是站在火炉前，边吃边同女佣们说说话，她们是唯一能让她感到轻松一些、好过一些的人。然而，无论怎样努力，她死去的丈夫都仿佛无处不在：不论她去哪儿，从哪里走过，也不论做什么事情，都会碰到某件他的东西，让她又想起他来。尽管在她看来，悲痛是忠贞的，也是合理的，但她还是希望尽一切可能不在痛苦中沉迷下去。于是，她做出一个极端的决定：将所有能让她想起亡夫的东西全部清出家门，这也是她唯一能想到的办法，唯有这样才能让自己在没有他的情况下活下去。
It was a ritual of eradication. Her son agreed to take his library so that she could replace his office with the sewing room she had never had when she was married. And her daughter would take some furniture and countless objects that she thought were just right for the antique auctions in New Orleans. All of this was a relief for Fermina Daza, although she was not at all amused to learn that the things she had bought on her honeymoon were now relics for antiquarians. To the silent stupefaction of the servants, the neighbors, the women friends who came to visit her during that time, she had a bonfire built in a vacant lot behind the house, and there she burned everything that reminded her of her husband: the most expensive and elegant clothes seen in the city since the last century, the finest shoes, the hats that resembled him more than his portraits, the siesta rocking chair from which he had arisen for the last time to die, innumerable objects so tied to her life that by now they formed part of her identity. She did it without the shadow of a doubt, in the full certainty that her husband would have approved, and not only for reasons of hygiene. For he had often expressed his desire to be cremated and not shut away in the seamless dark of a cedar box. His religion would not permit it, of course: he had dared to broach the subject with the Archbishop, just in case, and his answer had been a categorical no. It was pure illusion, because the Church did not permit the existence of crematoriums in our cemeteries, not even for the use of religions other than Catholic, and the advantage of building them would not have occurred to anyone but Juvenal Urbino. Fermina Daza did not forget her husband’s terror, and even in the confusion of the first hours she remembered to order the carpenter to leave a chink where light could come into the coffin as a consolation to him.
这是一次毁灭性的清理仪式。儿子同意将书房里的所有东西都搬走，好让她把这里改成缝纫室，自结婚以来，她还从没有过一间缝纫室。女儿则会带走一些家具和许多件她觉得适合在新奥尔良的古董行里拍卖的东西。这一切都让费尔明娜·达萨轻松了许多，尽管当她了解到自己在新婚旅行中买回来的东西已变成了古董商的文物时，心中有些不快。她不顾佣人、邻居以及那些日子赶来陪她的女友们沉默的惊愕，让人在房子后面的空地上点起一堆篝火，一股脑儿地烧掉了所有能使她回忆起丈夫的东西：上世纪以来城中所能见到的最昂贵、最考究的衣服，最精致的鞋子，比照片还像他本人的帽子，他临死前从上面起身的午睡摇椅，以及无数件与他的生活息息相关、已成为他本人一部分的物品。她做这些时没有一丝犹豫，完全确信丈夫也会同意这样做，还不仅仅是出于卫生的考虑。他曾多次表达过死后火化的愿望，不愿被囚禁在那黑暗的、没有一丝缝隙的雪松木盒子里。当然，他信奉的宗教禁止他这样做：他曾大着胆子探问过大主教的看法，但大主教斩钉截铁地予以否定。这纯属妄想，教会绝不会允许在我们的墓地上设置火葬炉，即便是专供非天主教徒使用也不行。事实上，除了胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺，谁也看不出这样做有什么好处。但费尔明娜·达萨深深记得丈夫的恐惧，即便是在最初那几个小时的恍惚中，她也没有忘记吩咐木匠在棺材上留一道能透光的缝隙，以此作为对丈夫的安慰。
At the end of the third week, in fact, she began to see the first light. But as it grew larger and brighter, she became aware that there was an evil phantom in her life who did not give her a moment’s peace. He was not the pitiable phantom who had haunted her in the Park of the Evangels and whom she had evoked with a certain tenderness after she had grown old, but the hateful phantom with his executioner’s frock coat and his hat held against his chest, whose thoughtless impertinence had disturbed her so much that she found it impossible not to think about him. Ever since her rejection of him at the age of eighteen, she had been convinced that she had left behind a seed of hatred in him that could only grow larger with time. She had always counted on that hatred, she had felt it in the air when the phantom was near, and the mere sight of him had upset and frightened her so that she never found a natural way to behave with him. On the night when he reiterated his love for her, while the flowers for her dead husband were still perfuming the house, she could not believe that his insolence was not the first step in God knows what sinister plan for revenge.
果然，三个星期以后，她开始看到曙光。可是随着光线越来越强，越来越清晰，她逐渐意识到自己的生活中有一个居心叵测的幽灵，让她一刻也不得安宁。他已不是当年那个在福音花园偷偷窥视她的让人可怜的幽灵，不是那个她进入暮年以后还时常怀着某种柔情想起的幽灵，而是那个穿着刽子手的长礼服、把帽子拿在胸前的令人厌恶的幽灵。他愚蠢的无礼行为让她心烦不已，以至于总是挥之不去。自从十八岁那年拒绝他以后，她一直觉得自己在他身上播下了仇恨的种子，而时间将使这种子生根发芽。她时刻都感觉到这种仇恨，每当这个幽灵离她很近，她都能在空气中闻到仇恨的味道，单是看他一眼，就使她心慌意乱。她是那么怕他，以至于在他面前，她始终找不到一种自然的方式让自己举止得体。那天晚上，当他向她重申爱情时，纪念亡夫的鲜花所散发的芳香还在房子里弥漫，她不能不把这种无礼的言行视作他报复行为的第一步，谁又知道这之后究竟还隐藏着多少阴险的企图呢。
In any event, the holocaust was in vain. In a very short while Fermina Daza realized that the memory of her dead husband was as resistant to the fire as it seemed to be to the passage of time. Even worse: after the incineration of his clothing, she continued to miss not only the many things she had loved in him but also what had most annoyed her: the noises he made on arising. That memory helped her to escape the mangrove swamps of grief. Above all else, she made the firm decision to go on with her life, remembering her husband as if he had not died. She knew that waking each morning would continue to be difficult, but it would become less and less so.
但不管怎样，那次焚烧行动是徒劳的。费尔明娜·达萨很快便发现，对亡夫的记忆不仅经得住火烧，而且似乎也经得住时间的流逝。更糟的是，当衣物化成灰烬，她不但依然十分怀念丈夫惹人喜欢的地方，而且也怀念起他令她心烦之处，比如每日起床时他弄出的声响。这些回忆帮助她走出了痛苦的丛林。于是，她再次下定决心，要带着对丈夫的回忆继续生活下去，就好像他没有死一样。她知道，每天早上醒来时依旧会很痛苦，但慢慢会好起来的。
Her persistent memory of him increased her rage. When she awoke thinking about him on the day after the funeral, she succeeded in removing him from her thoughts by a simple act of will. But the rage always returned, and she realized very soon that the desire to forget him was the strongest inducement for remembering him. Then, overcome by nostalgia, she dared to recall for the first time the illusory days of that unreal love. She tried to remember just how the little park was then, and the shabby almond trees, and the bench where he had loved her, because none of it still existed as it had been then. They had changed everything, they had removed the trees with their carpet of yellow leaves and replaced the statue of the decapitated hero with that of another, who wore his dress uniform but had no name or dates or reasons to justify him, and who stood on an ostentatious pedestal in which they had installed the electrical controls for the district. Her house, sold many years before, had fallen into total ruin at the hands of the Provincial Government. It was not easy for her to imagine Florentino Ariza as he had been then, much less to believe that the taciturn boy, so vulnerable in the rain, was the moth-eaten old wreck who had stood in front of her with no consideration for her situation, or the slightest respect for her grief, and had seared her soul with a flaming insult that still made it difficult for her to breathe.
他固执地占据着她的脑海，这让她怒火中烧。葬礼的第二天，她一醒来就想起了他，但凭借着坚定的意志，她又成功地把他从头脑中清除出去了。但怒火总是会不断回来，她很快就发现，想忘掉他的极大渴望便是最强烈的诱因，迫使她不得不想起他来。于是，她第一次被怀旧的情绪笼罩，壮着胆子回想起那段缥渺爱情的虚幻时光。她试着细细回想那时的小花园，干枯的杏树，以及他坐的那条长凳，试着回想这一切原本都是什么样子，因为它们全已不再是当初的模样。一切都已改变。那些树，连同满地的黄色落叶都不见了。在那个被斩首的英雄塑像的位置，人们树起了另一尊穿着华丽制服的雕像，没有姓名，没有日期，也没有说明建造缘由，但它有一个很气派的墩座，里边安着该地区的电力控制装置。她家的房子早在多年前就已卖掉，如今在省政府的手里破败得快散了架。要想象出弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨那时的样子，对她来说已殊非易事，而要把那个站在雨中的沉默寡言、无依无靠的小伙子，和现在这个体弱多病的腐朽老头儿认作同一个人，就更是难上加难了。这个老头儿完全不顾她的处境，对她的痛苦没有一丝一毫的尊重，就那么站到她的面前，用烈火般的侮辱灼烧着她的灵魂，至今都让她心烦得喘不过气来。
Cousin Hildebranda Sánchez had come to visit a short while after Fermina Daza returned from the ranch in Flores de María, where she had gone to recuperate from the misfortune of Miss Lynch. Old, fat, and contented, she had arrived in the company of her oldest son who, like his father, had been a colonel in the army but had been repudiated by him because of his contemptible behavior during the massacre of the banana workers in San Juan de la Ciénaga. The two cousins saw each other often and spent endless hours feeling nostalgia for the time when they first met. On her last visit, Hildebranda was more nostalgic than ever, and very affected by the burden of old age. In order to add even greater poignancy to their memories, she had brought her copy of the portrait of them dressed as old-fashioned ladies, taken by the Belgian photographer on the afternoon that a young Juvenal Urbino had delivered the coup de grace to a willful Fermina Daza. Her copy of the photograph had been lost, and Hildebranda’s was almost invisible, but they could both recognize themselves through the mists of disenchantment: young and beautiful as they would never be again.
当初，她为了从林奇小姐那桩倒霉事中恢复过来，到伊尔德布兰达·桑切斯表姐的马利亚之花庄园住了段日子，之后不久，表姐也来看望过她。表姐来的时候，又老又胖，但很幸福，由大儿子陪着。像父亲一样，她的大儿子已当上了陆军上校，但由于不光彩地参与了对圣胡安·德拉希耶纳加香蕉园工人的屠杀，曾被父亲拒之门外。两姐妹多次相见，每次都把时光消磨在回忆之中，回忆着她们初识的那个年代。最后一次来访时，伊尔德布兰达比以往任何时候都更怀念古老的好时光，并为眼下的年老体衰感慨万千。为了更好地沉浸在往事中，她带来了那张她们打扮得像古老贵妇似的照片，是那个比利时摄影师拍的，也正是在那个下午，年轻的胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺优雅地刺中了任性的费尔明娜·达萨的心房。费尔明娜·达萨自己的那张照片已经丢了，而伊尔德布兰达的这张也几乎快看不清了，但两人还是在那令人伤怀的模糊影像中认出了自己：那样的年轻、漂亮，而这一切已经一去不返。
For Hildebranda it was impossible not to speak of Florentino Ariza, because she always identified his fate with her own. She evoked him as she evoked the day she had sent her first telegram, and she could never erase from her heart the memory of the sad little bird condemned to oblivion. For her part, Fermina had often seen him without speaking to him, of course, and she could not imagine that he had been her first love. She always heard news about him, as sooner or later she heard news about anyone of any significance in the city. It was said that he had not married because of his unusual habits, but she paid no attention to this, in part because she never paid attention to rumors, and in part because such things were said in any event about men who were above suspicion. On the other hand, it seemed strange to her that Florentino Ariza would persist in his mystic attire and his rare lotions, and that he would continue to be so enigmatic after making his way in life in so spectacular and honorable a manner. It was impossible for her to believe he was the same person, and she was always surprised when Hildebranda would sigh: “Poor man, how he must have suffered!” For she had seen him without grief for a long time: a shadow that had been obliterated.
要想让伊尔德布兰达不提起弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨是不可能的，因为她一直认为他的命运与自己的十分相似。她回想起她第一次发电报那天看到他的样子，那个注定被恋人遗忘的可怜小鸟的形象永远也无法从她心中抹去。而费尔明娜·达萨呢，她后来见过他很多次，当然，并没有跟他说话，但她无法相信他就是自己的初恋爱人。总是有关于他的消息传到她这里，就像城中所有那些稍有点影响的人物只要有消息迟早都会传到她耳中一样。人们说他从未结过婚，因为他的兴趣与众不同。但这并没有引起她的注意，一方面是因为她从不理会传言，另一方面则因为人们对很多无可指摘的男人也会有类似的议论。但她觉得奇怪的，是弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨始终穿着他那身古怪的衣服，使用奇怪的沐浴露，而且，在他以如此引人注目和值得尊重的方式为自己的生活开辟了道路之后，却仍然神秘得像个谜一样。她无法相信他就是当初那个人，每当伊尔德布兰达感叹“可怜的人，他受了多少苦啊”的时候，她总是惊讶不已。因为从很久以前开始，她看到他时就已经感觉不到痛苦了：他已是一个从她心里被抹去的影子。
The mortal rage of the first shock remained intact after the symbolic cremation of her husband, and it grew and spread as she felt herself less capable of controlling it. Even worse: the spaces in her mind where she managed to appease her memories of the dead man were slowly but inexorably being taken over by the field of poppies where she had buried her memories of Florentino Ariza. And so she thought about him without wanting to, and the more she thought about him the angrier she became, and the angrier she became the more she thought about him, until it was something so unbearable that her mind could no longer contain it. Then she sat down at her dead husband’s desk and wrote Florentino Ariza a letter consisting of three irrational pages so full of insults and base provocations that it brought her the consolation of consciously committing the vilest act of her long life.
在为丈夫举行了象征性的火葬仪式后，第一次冲击给她带来的不可遏制的愤怒不但丝毫没有削减，而且越来越无法控制，甚至节外生枝起来。更有甚者，她好不容易摆脱了对死者的回忆，记忆的空间却被那片罂粟花缓慢而无情地占据，那里埋葬的是有关弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的一切。就这样，她不情愿地想着他，越想越愤怒，而越愤怒就越想，直到最终无法忍受，几乎要发起疯来。于是，她坐到亡夫的写字台前，丧失理智地给弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨写了一封长达三页的信，满是侮辱和恶毒的挑衅。如此主动地做了她漫长的一生中最不体面的一件事后，她内心感到安慰。
Nevertheless, on the night she met him in the movie theater just after her return from Flores de María, something strange occurred in her heart. She was not surprised that he was with a woman, and a black woman at that. What did surprise her was that he was so well preserved, that he behaved with the greatest self-assurance, and it did not occur to her that perhaps it was she, not he, who had changed after the troubling explosion of Miss Lynch in her private life. From then on, and for more than twenty years, she saw him with more compassionate eyes. On the night of the vigil for her husband, it not only seemed reasonable for him to be there, but she even understood it as the natural end of rancor: an act of forgiving and forgetting. That was why she was so taken aback by his dramatic reiteration of a love that for her had never existed, at an age when Florentino Ariza and she could expect nothing more from life.
然而，在电影院遇到他的那个晚上——那也是她从马利亚之花回来后不久的事——一种奇怪的感觉油然而生。他身边有个女人，而且是个黑女人，她并不感到惊讶。她诧异的是他竟保养得那么好，举止甚至比以前更加洒脱自如。她没有意识到，当林奇小姐令人烦恼地闯入她的私生活后，发生改变的自然应该是她，而不是他。从那时起，二十多年里，她带着更为同情的眼光看他。在为丈夫守灵的那天晚上，她不仅认为他的出现是可以理解的，甚至认为他对她的怨恨已自然地结束了：他的现身是原谅与遗忘的象征。所以，他竟然戏剧性地向她重申了在她看来从未存在过的爱情，实在出乎她的意料，而且还是在这样一个无论他还是她都只能安于天命的年纪。
Those weeks had been agonizing for Florentino Ariza as well. The night he reiterated his love to Fermina Daza he had wandered aimlessly through streets that had been devastated by the afternoon flood, asking himself in terror what he was going to do with the skin of the tiger he had just killed after having resisted its attacks for more than half a century. The city was in a state of emergency because of the violent rains. In some houses, half-naked men and women were trying to salvage whatever God willed from the flood, and Florentino Ariza had the impression that everyone’s calamity had something to do with his own. But the wind was calm and the stars of the Caribbean were quiet in their places. In the sudden silence of other voices, Florentino Ariza recognized the voice of the man whom Leona Cassiani and he had heard singing many years before, at the same hour and on the same corner: I came back from the bridge bathed in tears. A song that in some way, on that night, for him alone, had something to do with death.
而对弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨来说，那几个星期也是极其痛苦的。向费尔明娜·达萨重申爱情的那天晚上，他漫无目的地徘徊在被下午的大雨破坏殆尽的街道上，惊恐地自问，他刚刚杀死了围困自己半个多世纪的老虎，接下来该拿虎皮怎么办。由于暴雨肆虐，城市处于危急状态。一些房子里，半裸着身体的男女正试图凭上帝的旨意从洪水中抢救出点儿什么来。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨觉得这场众人的灾难仿佛也与自己息息相关。但此刻，风平浪静，加勒比的星星也静静地待在原来的位置上。忽然，在一片寂静之中，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨听到一个男人的歌声，那正是许多年前他和莱昂娜·卡西亚尼在同一时刻、同一个街角听到的歌声：我从桥上回来，泪流满面。那样的一首歌，那样的旋律，那样的夜晚，仿佛只为他而存在，且与死亡有着某种关联。
At the other end of the city was Leona Cassiani, alone and free and doubtless ready to provide him with the compassion he needed at two o’clock in the morning, at three o’clock, at any hour and under any circumstances. It would not be the first time he had knocked at her door in the wasteland of his sleepless nights, but he knew that she was too intelligent, and that they loved each other too much, for him to come crying to her lap and not tell her the reason. After a good deal of thought as he sleepwalked through the deserted city, it occurred to him that he could do no better than Prudencia Pitre, the Widow of Two, who was younger than he. They had first met in the last century, and if they stopped meeting it was because she refused to allow anyone to see her as she was, half blind and verging on decrepitude. As soon as he thought of her, Florentino Ariza returned to the Street of the Windows, put two bottles of port and a jar of pickles in a shopping bag, and went to visit her, not even knowing if she was still in her old house, if she was alone, or if she was alive.
在城市的另一端，莱昂娜·卡西亚尼孤独而自由，毫无疑问，她愿意在凌晨两点、三点，或是在任何时刻、任何情况下为他提供他需要的同情。而这也不是他第一次在失眠的荒原中去敲她的门，但他知道，她太聪明，他们彼此又爱得太深，他不可能只伏在她膝上哭泣而不告诉她原因。想了许久，也像梦游一样在荒凉的城市中徘徊了许久，他终于想起找哪个女人都不如找普鲁登西娅·皮特雷，那个“二夫寡妇”。她比他岁数小。他们上世纪就已相识，后来不再见面，是因为她坚持不愿让人看见她那时的样子：眼睛半瞎，已到了苍老的边缘。一想到她，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨就立刻回到窗户街，在一个购物袋里装上了两瓶波尔多葡萄酒和一小瓶腌菜，然后便去看她，尽管他都不知道她是否还住在原来的地方，是否一个人，甚至是否还活着。
He needed Tránsito Ariza then as he never had before, he needed her wise words, her head of a mock queen adorned with paper flowers. He could not avoid it: whenever he found himself on the edge of catastrophe, he needed the help of a woman. So that he passed by the Normal School, seeking out those who were within reach, and he saw a light in the long row of windows in América Vicuña’s dormitory. He had to make a great effort not to fall into the grandfather’s madness of carrying her off at two o’clock in the morning, warm with sleep in her swaddling clothes and still smelling of the cradle’s tantrums.
他从没有像此时这样想念特兰西多·阿里萨，想念她睿智的话语，想念她用纸花装扮起来的可笑的女王发式。无可避免，每当处在灾难的边缘时，他都需要一个女人的庇护。于是，他一路寻着可以找到女人的方向，来到师范学校，看见阿美利加·维库尼亚宿舍的一长排窗户上有一盏灯光。他做出了很大努力，才没让自己陷入老祖父的疯狂，在凌晨两点钟，把正在温暖的襁褓里安眠、还散发着摇篮的哭泣味道的孙女带走。
It was the only thing he could think of to say, just to say some thing. He was surprised at how much she had aged since the last time he saw her, and he was aware that she saw him the same way. But he consoled himself by thinking that in a moment, when they had both recovered from the initial shock, they would notice fewer and fewer of the blows that life had dealt the other, and they would again seem as young as they had been when they first met.
这是他唯一能想到的话，只是为了说点儿什么。他很惊讶，自从上一次见面以来，她竟衰老了这么多，而且他很清楚，她心里一定也是这样看他的。但他又自我安慰地想，等过上片刻，当两个人从最初的惊愕中恢复过来之后，慢慢就会发现其实生活在对方身上留下的伤痕并没有那么明显，然后就又会觉得彼此依然像当初认识时那样年轻了。
Prudencia Pitre had not forgotten his scratching signal at the door, the one he had used to identify himself when they thought they were still young although they no longer were, and she opened the door without any questions. The street was dark, he was barely visible in his black suit, his stiff hat, and his bat’s umbrella hanging over his arm, and her eyes were too weak to see him except in full light, but she recognized him by the gleam of the streetlamp on the metal frame of his eyeglasses. He looked like a murderer with blood still on his hands.
普鲁登西娅·皮特雷没有忘记他挠门的暗号，问都没问便给他开了门。在他们还自以为年轻其实不然的时候，他一直用这个暗号来表明身份。他穿着黑呢子衣服，戴着硬礼帽，胳膊上挂着一把蝙蝠似的雨伞，在漆黑一片的街上几乎辨不出身形。她的眼神不好，光线又暗，根本什么都看不清。但借着路灯照在他眼镜的金属框上反射出的光亮，她认出了他。他看上去就像个双手还沾满了鲜血的杀人凶手。
“Sanctuary for a poor orphan,” he said.
“请收留一个可怜的孤儿吧。”
“You look as if you are going to a funeral,” she said.
“你看上去就像要去参加葬礼。”她说。
It was true. She, along with almost the entire city, had been at the window since eleven o’clock, watching the largest and most sumptuous funeral procession that had been seen here since the death of Archbishop De Luna. She had been awakened from her siesta by the thundering artillery that made the earth tremble, by the dissonances of the marching bands, the confusion of funeral hymns over the clamoring bells in all the churches, which had been ringing without pause since the previous day. From her balcony she had seen the cavalry in dress uniform, the religious communities, the schools, the long black limousines of an invisible officialdom, the carriage drawn by horses in feathered headdresses and gold trappings, the flag-draped yellow coffin on the gun carriage of a historic cannon, and at the very end a line of old open Victorias that kept themselves alive in order to carry funeral wreaths. As soon as they had passed by Prudencia Pitre’s balcony, a little after midday, the deluge came and the funeral procession dispersed in a wild stampede.
确实如此。而她也像几乎全城的人一样，从十一点钟起就守在窗前，观看自大主教德鲁纳死后出席人数最多、也最豪华的送葬队伍。震撼大地的隆隆炮声、军乐队吹奏出的不和谐乐声，以及盖过了所有教堂自前一天起就敲个不停的丧钟的哀歌声，这一切交织在一起，把她从午睡中惊醒。她从阳台上看见穿着仪仗队制服骑在马上的军人、宗教团体、学校学生、政府要员乘坐的黑色长轿车、葬礼马车（拉车的马匹头上戴着插有羽毛的盔帽，身上披着金色披挂），以及一辆历史悠久的炮车，上面载着盖有国旗的黄色棺木，走在最后的是一列至今仍用来运送花圈的老式敞篷马车。午后不久，送葬队伍刚从普鲁登西娅·皮特雷的阳台前经过，便下起了倾盆大雨，人群惊慌散开。
“Death has no sense of the ridiculous,” he said, and added in sorrow: “above all at our age.”
“死是不会有滑稽之意的。”他说，又感伤地补了一句：“特别是到了我们这个年纪。”
“What an absurd way to die,” she said.
“这样的死法真是荒唐啊！”她说。
They were seated on the terrace, facing the open sea, looking at the ringed moon that took up half the sky, looking at the colored lights of the boats along the horizon, enjoying the mild, perfumed breeze after the storm. They drank port and ate pickles on slices of country bread that Prudencia Pitre cut from a loaf in the kitchen. They had spent many nights like this after she had been left a widow without children. Florentino Ariza had met her at a time when she would have received any man who wanted to be with her, even if he were hired by the hour, and they had established a relationship that was more serious and longer-lived than would have seemed possible.
他们坐在露台上，面对广阔的大海，望着光晕几乎占据了半个天空的月亮，欣赏着地平线上一条条轮船的五彩灯光，享受着暴风雨后温和芳香的微风。他们一边喝着波尔多葡萄酒，一边就着腌菜吃着普鲁登西娅·皮特雷从厨房的一个乡村面包上切下来的面包片。她无儿无女，自从守寡后，他们一起度过了无数个这样的夜晚。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨刚遇见她时，正是她可以接待任何愿意陪她的男人的时候，即便那男人是按小时租来的。但两人最终却建立起一种比表面看上去更严肃、也更长久的关系。
Although she never even hinted at it, she would have sold her soul to the devil to marry him. She knew that it would not be easy to sub mit to his miserliness, or the foolishness of his premature appearance of age, or his maniacal sense of order, or his eagerness to ask for everything and give nothing at all in return, but despite all this, no man was better company because no other man in the world was so in need of love. But no other man was as elusive either, so that their love never went beyond the point it always reached for him: the point where it would not interfere with his determination to remain free for Fermina Daza. Nevertheless, it lasted many years, even after he had arranged for Prudencia Pitre to marry a salesman who was home for three months and traveled for the next three and with whom she had a daughter and four sons, one of whom, she swore, was Florentino Ariza’s.
尽管她从没有暗示过，但如果能与他一起再次步入婚姻殿堂，那么，即便是让她把灵魂出卖给魔鬼，她也会心甘情愿。她知道，要适应他的吝啬，他早熟外表下不谙世事的执拗，他古怪的性情，他只知索取、不愿付出的渴望，这一切都不容易，但尽管如此，却没有哪个男人是比他更好的伴侣了，因为这世上没有哪个男人比他更需要爱。但同时，也没有哪个男人比他更油滑，因此，他们的爱从不会超越他所掌控的界线：一切以不干扰他为费尔明娜·达萨保持自由之身的决心为准则。不过，他们的爱情还是持续了很多年，即便是在他安排好一切，让她嫁给了一个商业代理人后依旧如此。那个代理人每次在家里待三个月，然后便要四处跑三个月，她和他有一个女儿和四个儿子，据她发誓说，其中一个儿子是弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的。
Florentino Ariza, in a state of agitation that he could not calm with four glasses of port, talked at length about the same subject: the past, the good memories from the past, for he was desperate to find the hidden road in the past that would bring him relief. For that was what he needed: to let his soul escape through his mouth. When he saw the first light of dawn on the horizon, he attempted an indirect approach. He asked, in a way that seemed casual: “What would you do if someone proposed marriage to you, just as you are, a widow of your age?” She laughed with a wrinkled old woman’s laugh, and asked in turn:
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨处于兴奋之中，喝了四杯波尔多还是静不下来。他继续回忆往事，述说着美好的过去，从很久以前开始，这就是他唯一的话题了。事实上，他迫切希望的，是从对往昔的回忆中找到一条秘密之路，以让自己得到发泄。因为这就是他急需的：把灵魂从嘴中释放出来。当他看到地平线上最初的几道光亮时，尝试着旁敲侧击地接近目标。他用一种看似随意的方式问道：“比如像你这样，身为寡妇，又到了这把年纪，如果有人向你求婚，你会怎么办？”她笑了，笑出一脸老太婆的皱纹，反问道：
They talked, not concerned about the hour, because both were accustomed to sharing the sleepless nights of their youth, and they had much less to lose in the sleeplessness of old age. Although he almost never had more than two glasses of wine, Florentino Ariza still had not caught his breath after the third. He was dripping with perspiration, and the Widow of Two told him to take off his jacket, his vest, his trousers, to take off everything if he liked, what the hell: after all, they knew each other better naked than dressed. He said he would if she did the same, but she refused: some time ago she had looked at herself in the wardrobe mirror and suddenly realized that she would no longer have the courage to allow anyone — not him, not anyone — to see her undressed.
他们不顾时间地交谈着，因为自年轻时起两人就习惯了分享失眠之夜，老了以后，失眠就更不会让他们失去什么了。虽然弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨喝酒几乎从不超过两杯，可这回，三杯下肚后，他仍旧没缓过气来。他汗如雨下，于是“二夫寡妇”让他脱掉外套、背心和长裤，如果愿意，全部脱掉也可以，这他妈的又算什么，说到底，比起穿着衣服，他们赤身裸体时更加了解对方。他说，如果她脱，他就脱。可她不愿意：很久以前，她就在衣橱的镜子里照过，立刻明白，她不会再有勇气让他或者任何人见自己的裸·体。
Florentino Ariza always forgot when he should not have that women, and Prudencia Pitre more than any other, always think about the hidden meanings of questions more than about the questions themselves. Filled with sudden terror because of her chilling marksmanship, he slipped through the back door: “I am speaking of you.” She laughed again: “Go make fun of your bitch of a mother, may she rest in peace.” Then she urged him to say what he meant to say, because she knew that he, or any other man, would not have awakened her at three o’clock in the morning after so many years of not seeing her just to drink port and eat country bread with pickles. She said: “You do that only “when you are looking for someone to cry with.” Florentino Ariza withdrew in defeat.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨总是在最不该忘记的时候忘记这一点：女人们对问题中隐含的意思比对问题本身想得更多，而普鲁登西娅·皮特雷尤其如此。她一针见血得令人心惊胆寒，他惊慌失措，想赶紧找一扇假门溜走：“我是说你。”她又笑了：“去逗你的婊子娘吧。愿她的在天之灵安息。”她催他把想说的事说出来，因为她知道，无论他，还是任何一个男人，都不会在久别多年之后，仅仅为了喝波尔多、吃乡村面包就腌菜而在凌晨三点把她叫醒。她说：“只有当一个人想找人大哭一场时，才会这样做。”弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨败下阵来。
“Are you speaking of the Widow Urbino?”
“你是在说乌尔比诺的寡妇吧？”
“For once you are wrong,” he said. “My reasons tonight have more to do with singing.”
“这回你可错了。”他说，“我今晚来其实是为了唱歌。”
And she began to sing, in a very good voice, the song that was popular then: Ramona, I cannot live without you. The night was over, for he did not dare to play forbidden games with a woman who had proven too many times that she knew the dark side of the moon. He walked out into a different city, one that was perfumed by the last dahlias of June, and onto a street out of his youth, where the shadowy widows from five o’clock Mass were filing by. But now it was he, not they, who crossed the street, so they would not see the tears he could no longer hold back, not his midnight tears, as he thought, but other tears: the ones he had been swallowing for fifty-one years, nine months and four days.
他用动听的嗓音唱起了当时的流行曲：拉蒙娜，没有你，我无法活下去。这一夜就这样结束了，因为他不敢再和这个已反复证明了她了解月亮的另一面的女人玩这种禁忌游戏。他走出门去，仿佛来到了另一座城市，六月里最后的大丽花香飘四溢，而他仿佛走在年轻时的街道上，又一次见到一个接一个的寡妇在黑暗中去望五点钟的弥撒。但如今，是他，而不是她们，不得不走到另一边的人行道上去，为了不让人看到他止不住的泪水。他以为这都是从半夜开始才流淌不息的，但其实并不是，这是五十一年九个月零四天以来，他一直强压在心头的泪水。
“Let’s sing, then,” she said.
“那咱们唱吧。”她说。
He had lost all track of time, and did not know where he was when he awoke facing a large, dazzling window. The voice of América Vicuña playing ball in the garden with the servant girls brought him back to reality: he was in his mother’s bed. He had kept her bedroom intact, and he would sleep there to feel less alone on the few occasions when he was troubled by his solitude. Across from the bed hung the large mirror from Don Sancho’s Inn, and he had only to see it when he awoke to see Fermina Daza reflected in its depths. He knew that it was Saturday, because that was the day the chauffeur picked up América Vicuña at her boarding school and brought her back to his house. He realized that he had slept without knowing it, dreaming that he could not sleep, in a dream that had been disturbed by the wrathful face of Fermina Daza. He bathed, wondering what his next step should be, he dressed very slowly in his best clothing, he dabbed on cologne and waxed the ends of his white mustache, he left the bedroom, and from the second-floor hallway he saw the beautiful child in her uniform catching the ball with the grace that had made him tremble on so many Saturdays but this morning did not disquiet him in the least. He indicated that she should come with him, and before he climbed into the automobile he said, although it was not necessary: “Today we are not going to do our things.” He took her to the American Ice Cream Shop, filled at this hour with parents eating ice cream with their children under the long blades of the fans that hung from the smooth ceiling. América Vicuña ordered an enormous glass filled with layers of ci e cream, each a different color, her favorite dish and the one that was the most popular because it gave off an aura of magic. Florentino Ariza drank black coffee and looked at the girl without speaking, while she ate the ice cream with a spoon that had a very long handle so that one could reach the bottom of the glass. Still looking at her, he said without warning:
当他在一扇耀眼的窗前醒来时，不知道自己身在何处，也失去了对时间的把握。阿美利加·维库尼亚和女佣们在花园里玩球的声音把他带回了现实：他躺在母亲的床上，这间卧室始终保持着原样，在少有的孤独让他不安的时候，他常常睡在这里，以减少一点寂寞。床对面是堂桑丘餐厅那面大镜子，每每醒来时就能看见它，看见镜子深处反射出的费尔明娜·达萨的身影，对他来说就已足够了。他知道今天是星期六，因为每到这一天，司机便会从寄宿学校把阿美利加·维库尼亚接出来，送到他家。他意识到之前一边梦见自己无法入睡，一边却不知不觉睡着了，还做了一个梦，梦里被费尔明娜·达萨愤怒的脸庞扰得心神不宁。他一边洗澡，一边想下一步该怎么办。他不慌不忙地穿上最好的衣服，喷了香水，给那两撇尖尖的白胡子上胶。刚走出卧室，他便从二楼的走廊上看见了那个穿校服的漂亮姑娘。她正在跃起身子接住空中的皮球，那迷人的身姿曾在那么多个星期六让他战栗不止，但这天早上，却没有在他心中激起丝毫涟漪。他示意她跟他走。上汽车前，他毫无必要地对她说：“今天我们不玩小游戏。”他带她来到美洲冷饮店，那里挤满了和孩子一起在天花板的大吊扇下吃冰激凌的父母们。阿美利加·维库尼亚要了一个好几层的冰激凌，装在一只巨大的杯子里，每一层的颜色都不同。这是她最喜欢的冰激凌，也是这里卖得最好的，因为它能散发一种神奇的烟雾。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨一边喝着黑咖啡，一边一言不发地看着女孩，她用一把很长的勺子吃着冰激凌，一直够到杯底。他目不转睛地看着她，突然说道：
“That’s a lie,” she said. “Old men don’t marry.”
“撒谎，”她说，“老头儿是不会结婚的。”
She looked into his eyes with a flash of uncertainty, her spoon suspended in midair, but then she recovered and smiled.
她拿着勺子的手停在空中，脸上露出一丝疑惑，她看着他的眼睛，随即又镇静下来，笑了笑。
“I am going to marry.”
“我要结婚了。”
That afternoon he left her at her school under a steady downpour just as the Angelus was ringing, after the two of them had watched the puppet show in the park, had lunch at the fried-fish stands on the jetties, seen the caged animals in the circus that had just come to town, bought all kinds of candies at the outdoor stalls to take back to school, and driven around the city several times with the top down, so that she could become accustomed to the idea that he was her guardian and no longer her lover. On Sunday he sent the automobile for her in the event she wanted to take a drive with her friends, but he did not want to see her, because since the previous week he had come to full consciousness of both their ages. That night he decided to write a letter of apology to Fermina Daza, its only purpose to show that he had not given up, but he put it off until the next day. On Monday, after exactly three weeks of agony, he walked into his house, soaked by the rain, and found her letter.
那天下午，他们一起去看了公园里的木偶戏，在防波堤的炸鱼摊上吃了午饭，看了刚到本城的一个马戏团关在笼子里的野兽，在“代笔人门廊”那儿买了准备带回寄宿学校的各种甜食，又乘着敞篷汽车在城中转了几圈，这都是为了让她逐渐习惯一点，即他是她的监护人，而不是她的情人。之后，在一场没完没了的大雨中，刚好赶在《三钟经》祈祷之前，他把她送回了学校。星期日，他给她派了汽车，以便她和女伴们外出散心，但他不想见她，因为从上星期起，他已完全意识到了两人年龄上的差距。那天晚上，他下定决心要给费尔明娜·达萨写一封请求原谅的信，哪怕只是为了表明自己并没有放弃，但最后又决定第二天再写。星期一，就在饱受煎熬整整三个星期的时候，被大雨淋得湿透的他走进家门，发现了她的信。
It was eight o’clock at night. The two servant girls were in bed, and they had left on the light in the hallway that lit Florentino Ariza’s way to his bedroom. He knew that his Spartan, bland supper was on the table in the dining room, but the slight hunger he felt after so many days of haphazard eating vanished with the emotional upheaval of the letter. His hands were shaking so much that it was difficult for him to turn on the overhead light in the bedroom. He put the rain-soaked letter on the bed, lit the lamp on the night table, and with the feigned tranquillity that was his customary way of calming himself, he took off his wet jacket and hung it on the back of the chair, he took off his vest, folded it with care, and placed it on top of the jacket, he took off his black silk string tie and the celluloid collar that was no longer fashionable in the world, he unbuttoned his shirt down to his waist and loosened his belt so that he could breathe with greater ease, and at last he took off his hat and put it by the window to dry. Then he began to tremble because he did not know where the letter was, and his nervous excitement was so great that he was surprised when he found it, for he did not remember placing it on the bed. Before opening it, he dried the envelope with his handkerchief, taking care not to smear the ink in which his name was written, and as he did so it occurred to him that the secret was no longer shared by two people but by three, at least, for whoever had delivered it must have noticed that only three weeks after the death of her husband, the Widow Urbino was writing to someone who did not belong to her world, and with so much urgency that she did not use the regular mails and so much secretiveness that she had ordered that it not be handed to anyone but slipped under the door instead, as if it were an anonymous letter. He did not have to tear open the envelope, for the water had dissolved the glue, but the letter was dry: three closely written pages with no salutation, and signed with the initials of her married name.
那是晚上八点。两个女佣都已睡下，她们留着走廊里唯一的一盏长明灯，好照着弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨走进卧室。他知道，他那简单乏味的晚餐就摆在饭厅的桌子上，很多天以来，他都只是随便吃两口东西，而此刻，好容易累积下来的一丝饿意又因为激动被抛到了九霄云外。由于双手颤抖，他费了好大劲才把卧室的大灯点亮。他把湿漉漉的信放在床上，点亮床头柜上的小灯，故作镇定——这是他让自己平静下来的一贯做法。他脱掉湿透的外套，把它挂在椅背上，又脱掉背心，折好放在外套上，然后，他解下黑色的丝质领结，摘下如今已经过时的赛璐珞衣领，把衬衫的扣子解至腰间，松开皮带，以便更好地呼吸，最后，他摘下帽子，把它晾在窗边。突然，他浑身颤抖了一下，忘记把信放到哪里去了，这让他紧张万分，以至于最后找到信时大吃一惊：他已经不记得自己把它放到床上了。打开之前，他用手绢擦干信封，小心翼翼不让写着自己名字的墨水洇开。这样做时，他突然意识到这个秘密已非他们两人独享，而是至少有第三人知晓，因为不管送信人是谁，那人必会注意到乌尔比诺的遗孀在丈夫死后仅三个星期便写信给一个她圈子以外的人，而且如此急迫，没有通过邮寄，还如此神秘，嘱咐他不能交到对方手中，而是要像匿名字条一样，从门下塞进来。他无需撕坏信封，因为胶水已被水浸开了。但信还是干的：密密麻麻的三页纸，没有抬头，末尾签名是她婚后姓名的首字母。
He sat on the bed and read it through once as quickly as he could, more intrigued by the tone than by the content, and before he reached the second page he knew that it was in fact the insulting letter he had expected to receive. He laid it, unfolded, in the light shed by the bed-lamp, he took off his shoes and his wet socks, he turned out the overhead light, using the switch next to the door, and at last he put on his chamois mustache cover and lay down without removing his trousers and shirt, his head supported by two large pillows that he used as a backrest for reading. Now he read it again, this time syllable by syllable, scrutinizing each so that none of the letter’s secret intentions would be hidden from him, and then he read it four more times, until he was so full of the written words that they began to lose all meaning. At last he placed it, without the envelope, in the drawer of the night table, lay on his back with his hands behind his head, and for four hours he did not blink, he hardly breathed, he was more dead than a dead man, as he stared into the space in the mirror where she had been. Precisely at midnight he went to the kitchen and prepared a thermos of coffee as thick as crude oil, then he took it to his room, put his false teeth into the glass of boric acid solution that he always found ready for him on the night table, and resumed the posture of a recumbent marble statue, with momentary shifts in position when he took a sip of coffee, until the maid came in at six o’clock with a fresh thermos.
他坐在床上，先飞快地读了一遍。比起内容来，信的语气更让他好奇。还没读到第二页，他就已经知道这正是一封他一直在等的辱骂信。他把信展开，放在床头灯的光亮下，然后脱下湿漉漉的鞋袜，走到门口熄了大灯，戴上岩羚羊皮的护须罩，没脱裤子和衬衫就躺了下来，头倚在他阅读时常用来当靠背的两个大枕头上。他又读了一遍，这次是一字一句，逐字推敲，不放过任何一个隐藏的含义。之后，他又读了四遍，直到脑中充满了那些字句，而它们开始失去原本的意义。最后，他把没套信封的信放到床头柜的抽屉里，仰面躺下，两手交叉枕在脑后。四个小时里，他的眼睛一眨不眨地呆望着那面她曾出现在其中的空镜子，几乎没有了呼吸，比死人还像死人。午夜十二点整，他来到厨房，煮了一壶浓得像原油似的咖啡，拿到房间里，然后将假牙放进床头柜上一直为他准备好的硼酸水中。之后，他又恢复了刚才那种大理石像似的躺卧姿势，但每隔一段时间会呷一口咖啡，只在这片刻才动弹一下，直到第二天早上六点，女佣又送来满满一壶咖啡。
Florentino Ariza knew by then what one of his next steps was going to be. In truth, the insults caused him no pain, and he was not concerned with rectifying the unjust accusations that could have been worse, considering Fermina Daza’s character and the gravity of the cause. All that interested him was that the letter, in and of itself, gave him the opportunity, and even recognized his right, to respond. Even more: it demanded that he respond. So that life was now at the point where he had wanted it to be. Everything else depended on him, and he was convinced that his private hell of over half a century’s duration would still present him with many mortal challenges, which he was prepared to confront with more ardor and more sorrow and more love than he had brought to any of them before now, because these would be the last.
这时候，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨已经知道接下来的每一步该怎么做了。事实上，那些侮辱并没有让他心痛，他也无意去澄清那些不公的罪名，他了解费尔明娜·达萨的性格，也清楚她此番义正词严的理由，她的言词原可以更锋利些的。他唯一感兴趣的是这封信本身给了他机会，甚至是承认了他有权回复。进一步说，她其实是在要求他做出答复。这样一来，生活此刻正处于他期望中的转捩点。剩下的一切就看他的了，他十分确信，自己那持续了半个多世纪的私人地狱还会将很多生死考验摆到他面前，而他也准备好了带着前所未有的热情、痛苦和爱去面对它们，因为这将是最后的考验。
When he went to his office five days after receiving the letter from Fermina Daza, he felt as if he were floating in an abrupt and unusual absence of the noise of the typewriters, whose sound, like rain, had become less noticeable than silence. It was a moment of calm. When the sound began again, Florentino Ariza went to Leona Cas-siani’s office and watched her as she sat in front of her own personal typewriter, which responded to her fingertips as if it were human. She knew she was being observed, and she looked toward the door with her awesome solar smile, but she did not stop typing until the end of the paragraph.
接到费尔明娜·达萨的信五天以后，他来到办公室时，感觉自己仿佛漂浮在某种突如其来而又不同寻常的打字机真空之中，那机器雨点般的声音反而让寂静显得格外引人注意。原来，是它暂时停了下来。当声音重新响起时，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨把身子探进莱昂娜·卡西亚尼的办公室，看见她坐在自己的打字机前，而那台机器像有灵气似的在她的指尖下听从着指挥。她发觉有人在窥视她，便带着她那令人生畏的灿烂微笑朝门口看了看，但没有停下来，直到把那段文字打完。
Her expression — she who was no longer surprised at anything — was one of genuine surprise.
早已处事不惊的她听了这话，也露出惊诧的表情。
For that very reason she could make no other reply. Florentino Ariza had not thought of it either until that moment, and he decided to risk it with no reservations. He took one of the office typewriters home, his subordinates joking good-naturedly: “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Leona Cassiani, enthusiastic about anything new, offered to give him typing lessons at home. But he had been opposed to methodical learning ever since Lotario Thugut had wanted to teach him to play the violin by reading notes and warned him that he would need at least a year to begin, five more to qualify for a professional orchestra, and six hours a day for the rest of his life in order to play well. And yet he had convinced his mother to buy him a blind man’s violin, and with the five basic rules given him by Lotario Thugut, in less than a year he had dared to play in the choir of the Cathedral and to serenade Fermina Daza from the paupers” cemetery according to the direction of the winds. If that had been the case at the age of twenty, with something as difficult as the violin, he did not see why it could not also be the case at the age of seventy-six, with a one-finger instrument like the typewriter.
因此，她也就无法做出其他回答。而在此之前，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨也没有想过这种可能性，但他决定冒险到底。他将办公室的一台打字机搬回家，引来下属一片友好的嘲笑：“老鹦鹉是学不会说话的啦。”莱昂娜·卡西亚尼对任何新鲜事都抱有热情，自告奋勇到家中去给他上打字课。可是，自从洛达里奥·图古特想教他按照乐谱拉小提琴的时候起，他就反对系统学习。洛达里奥·图古特吓唬他说，入门至少需要一年，要想得到专业管弦乐队的认可，需要五年，而若想真真正正拉好琴，则需要一生的时间，而且每天都要练习六个钟头。可他最终说服母亲给他买了一把盲人小提琴，按照洛达里奥·图古特教给他的五条基本规则练了不到一年，就敢去大教堂的唱诗班里演奏，还能从贫民墓地根据风向为费尔明娜·达萨送去一首首小夜曲。如果说能在二十岁学会像拉小提琴这样困难的事，他想不出自己为何就不能在七十六岁学会像打字这样只需要动用一根手指的活计。
“Tell me something, lionlady of my soul,” asked Florentino Ariza. “How would you feel if you received a love letter written on that thing?”
“告诉我一件事，我亲爱的母狮，”弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨问，“如果你收到一封用这玩意儿写的情书，你会有何感觉？”
“My God, man!” she exclaimed. “It never occurred to me.”
“天哪！”她惊呼道，“我可从来没遇到过这样的事。”
It was a six-page letter, unlike any he had ever written before. It did not have the tone, or the style, or the rhetorical air of his early years of love, and his argument was so rational and measured that the scent of a gardenia would have been out of place. In a certain sense it was his closest approximation to the business letters he had never been able to write. Years later, a typed personal letter would be considered almost an insult, but at that time the typewriter was still an office animal without its own code of ethics, and its domestication for personal use was not foreseen in the books on etiquette. It seemed more like bold modernity, which was how Fermina Daza must have understood it, for in her second letter to Florentino Ariza, she began by begging his pardon for any difficulties in reading her handwriting, since she did not have at her disposal any means more advanced than her steel pen.
这是一封六页的信，和过去他写过的任何一封信都大相径庭。没有了初恋时的语气、文风和飘逸修辞，论述得如此合情合理，而且恰如其分，以至于若配上栀子花的香气都会显得唐突。在某种意义上说，这是他写得最接近商业信函的信，尽管他从来也没写好过这类信件。多年以后，一封用机器打出的私人信件几乎会被视作一种侮辱，但在当时，打字机还是办公室里的一头猛兽，尚没有自己的伦理特征，礼仪教科书也还没预见到它将被驯化用于私人用途。这更像是一种大胆的现代主义行为，至少费尔明娜·达萨定是这样理解的，因为就在她写给弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的第二封信中，一开头就请求他原谅她潦草的字体，因为她没有比钢笔更先进的书写工具。
He was right. He needed three days to learn the position of the letters on the keyboard, another six to learn to think while he typed, and three more to complete the first letter without errors after tearing up half a ream of paper. He gave it a solemn salutation — Señora — and signed it with his initial, as he had done in the perfumed love letters of his youth. He mailed it in an envelope with the mourning vignettes that were de rigueur for a letter to a recent widow, and with no return address on the back.
他想得没错。他用了三天时间来记住键盘上字母的位置，又花了六天时间学会如何一边打字一边思考，最后用三天时间，在撕碎了半令纸后，打出了第一封准确无误的信。他用了一个庄严的抬头：夫人，落款则是自己名字的首字母，就像年轻时那一封封飘香的信一样。他把信邮寄出去，用的是绘有哀悼纹饰的信封，这是给新近孀居的寡妇写信的规矩，并且，信封背面没有署寄信人的姓名。
Florentino Ariza did not even refer to the terrible letter that she had sent him, but from the very beginning he attempted a new method of seduction, without any reference to past loves or even to the past itself: a clean slate. Instead, he wrote an extensive meditation on life based on his ideas about, and experience of, relations between men and women, which at one time he had intended to write as a complement to the Lovers” Companion. Only now he disguised it in the patriarchal style of an old man’s memories so that it would not be too obvious that it was really a document of love. First he wrote many drafts in his old style, which took longer to read with a cool head than to throw into the fire. But he knew that any conventional slip, the slightest nostalgic indiscretion, could revive the unpleasant taste of the past in her heart, and although he foresaw her returning a hundred letters to him before she dared open the first, he preferred that it not happen even once. And so he planned everything down to the last detail, as if it were the final battle: new intrigues, new hopes in a woman who had already lived a full and complete life. It had to be a mad dream, one that would give her the courage she would need to discard the prejudices of a class that had not always been hers but had become hers more than anyone’s. It had to teach her to think of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and omega, an end in itself.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨在信中甚至都没有提到她寄给他的那封可怕的信，而是从一开始就试图采取一种截然不同的方式诱导她，对过去的爱情只字不提，连带过去的一切都不再提起：所有往事一笔勾销，一切重新开始。他写下的更像是对人生的一种广泛性的思考，依据的是多年来他对男女之间关系的看法和经验，他曾一度想把这些作为《恋人指南》的增订本写出来，只不过此时，他把这种思考隐藏在一种家长式的淳朴文风之下，如同一个老者的回忆，为的就是不那么明显地被人看出，这实际上是一封倾诉爱情的书信。他原本也按照旧时的文风写了很多份草稿，但以冷静的头脑一读再读之后，最终在一瞬间把它们付诸一炬。他知道，任何一个不起眼的疏忽，或者哪怕轻率流露出的一点点怀旧之情，都可能搅起她对往事的反感。虽然他预料到她有可能在鼓足勇气打开第一封信之前先退上个上百封信，但还是盼望这样的事一次也不要发生。所以，他像筹划最后一场决战那样，对每个细枝末节都思虑周详：一切都要与众不同，如此方能在一个于巅峰上过完一生的女人心中激起新的好奇、新的兴致和新的希望。这封信应该要提供一种蠢蠢欲动的幻想，并且给予她足够的勇气，把某个阶层的不公偏见扔进垃圾堆里去。她原本并不出身于那个阶层，可那个阶层最终却变得比其他任何阶层都更像她的出身之处。这封信应该教会她把爱情想成一种美好的状态，而非达到任何目的的途径，爱情自有其本身的起点和终点。
He had the good sense not to expect an immediate reply, to be satisfied if the letter was not returned to him. It was not, nor were any of the ones that followed, and as the days passed, his excitement grew, for the more days that passed without her letters being returned, the greater his hope of a reply. In the beginning, the frequency of his letters was conditioned by the dexterity of his fingers: first one a week, then two, and at last one a day. He was happy about the progress made in the mail service since his days as a standard-bearer, for he would not have risked being seen every day in the post office mailing a letter to the same person, or sending it with someone who might talk. On the other hand, it was very easy to send an employee to buy enough stamps for a month, and then slip the letter into one of the three mailboxes located in the old city. He soon made that ritual a part of his routine: he took advantage of his insomnia to write, and the next day, on his way to the office, he would ask the driver to stop for a moment at a corner box, and he would get out to mail the letter. He never allowed the chauffeur to do it for him, as he attempted to do one rainy morning, and at times he took the precaution of carrying several letters rather than just one, so that it would seem more natural. The chauffeur did not know, of course, that the additional letters were blank pages that Florentino Ariza addressed to himself, for he had never carried on a private correspondence with anyone, with the exception of the guardian’s report that he sent at the end of each month to the parents of América Vicuña, with his personal impressions of the girl’s conduct, her state of mind and health, and the progress she was making in her studies.
他清楚地知道不能期待立刻得到答复，其实只要信不退回，他也就心满意足了。这封信果然没有退回来，以后的每一封也都没有退回来。随着日子一天天过去，他的焦虑与日俱增。越久不见退信，他就越希望得到一封回信。一开始，他写信的频率取决于他手指的灵活程度：先是每星期一封，后来每星期两封，最后是每天一封。对于邮电事业从他当旗手的时代到目前为止所取得的进步，他备感欣慰，因为他不必再冒被人发现每天到邮局去给同一个人寄信的风险，也不必冒险找人送信，因为这人有可能把事情说出去。相反，只要派一个职员买回能用上一个月的邮票，再把信塞进分布在老城区的三个邮筒中的任何一个，这简直易如反掌。很快，他把这个习惯纳入了他的生活常规：他利用不眠的夜晚写信，然后在第二天去办公室的路上，让司机在街角的邮筒前停一分钟，自己下车亲自把信放进去。他从不让司机代他投信，尽管在一个雨天的早晨，司机曾想帮他这样做。还有时，他小心谨慎，不止带一封信，而是同时带上好几封，为了显得更加自然。司机当然不知道，那些凑数的信件不过是弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨寄给自己的几张白纸，因为他从不与任何人互通私人信件，除了每个月末会写信给阿美利加·维库尼亚的父母，作为监护人汇报一下他对姑娘的行为、精神状态、健康情况以及她在学习上取得的好成绩的个人印象。
After the first month he began to number the letters and to head them with a synopsis of the previous ones, as in the serialized novels in the newspapers, for fear that Fermina Daza would not realize that they had a certain continuity. When they became daily letters, moreover, he replaced the envelopes that had mourning vignettes with long white envelopes, and this gave them the added impersonality of business letters. When he began, he was prepared to subject his patience to a crucial test, at least until he had proof that he was wasting his time with the only new approach he could think of. He waited, in fact, not with the many kinds of suffering that waiting had caused him in his youth, but with the stubbornness of an old man made of stone who had nothing else to think about, nothing else to do in a riverboat company that by this time was sailing without his help before favorable winds, and who was also convinced that he would be alive and in perfect possession of his male faculties the next day, or the day after that, or whenever Fermina Daza at last was convinced that there was no other remedy for her solitary widow’s yearnings than to lower the drawbridge for him.
从第一个月起，他就开始给信编号，像报纸上的连载小说一样，在每封信的开头对上一封信做一小结，生怕费尔明娜·达萨看不出它们之间存在着一定的联系。此外，自从信的频率变成每日一封后，他把带有哀悼纹饰的信封换成白色的长信封，这样一来，它们看上去就像千篇一律的商业信函，不知出自何人之手。从一开始，他就准备好让自己的耐心经受更大的考验，至少，只要没有确凿的证据表明他是在用所能想出的唯一与众不同的方法浪费时间，就要坚持下去。的确，他等待着，不像年轻时那样带有种种苦痛烦忧，而是以一个坚如磐石的老人的固执等待。反正，这个老人在一家已经一帆风顺、只身前进的河运公司里也别无他事可想，别无他事可做。他坚信自己能活下去，并能完美地保持他的男性机能，一直等到明天、后天，或者永远等下去。费尔明娜·达萨最终会说服自己，她那孤独寡妇的焦虑与痛苦没有其他出路，唯有向他放下吊桥。
Meanwhile, he continued with his normal life. In anticipation of a favorable reply, he began a second renovation of his house so that it would be worthy of the woman who could have considered herself its lady and mistress from the day of its purchase. He visited Prudencia Pitre again several times, as he had promised, in order to prove to her that he loved her despite the devastation wrought by age, loved her in full sunlight and with the doors open, and not only on his nights of desolation. He continued to pass by Andrea Varón’s house until he found the bathroom light turned off, and he tried to lose himself in the wildness of her bed even though it was only so he would not lose the habit of love, in keeping with another of his superstitions, not disproved so far, that the body carries on for as long as you do.
与此同时，他仍旧过着有条不紊的生活。由于预见自己会得到一个圆满的答复，他对房子进行了第二次整修，以使它配得上那个自它被买下来那天起，就该来当女主人的人。他遵守承诺，又去看了几次普鲁登西娅·皮特雷，以向她证明尽管年岁不饶人，他还是爱她的，而且不只是在孤苦无依的夜晚，有几次还是在大白天，从敞开的大门走进去的。他仍旧从安德雷娅·瓦隆的家门前经过，直到有一天看见浴室的灯熄着，便进去在她的床上粗野地尝试各种疯狂的举动，尽管这样做不过是为了让自己不失去爱的习惯，其依据是他的一个到那时为止尚未被证伪的迷信，即一个人只要坚持做爱，身体就会一直管用。
His relations with América Vicuña were the only difficulty. He had repeated the order to his chauffeur to pick her up on Saturdays at ten o’clock in the morning at the school, but he did not know what to do with her during the weekends. For the first time he did not concern himself with her, and she resented the change. He placed her in the care of the servant girls and had them take her to the afternoon film, to the band concerts in the children’s park, to the charity bazaars, or he arranged Sunday activities for her and her classmates so that he would not have to take her to the hidden paradise behind his offices, to which she had always wanted to return after the first time he took her there. In the fog of his new illusion, he did not realize that women can become adults in three days, and that three years had gone by since he had met her boat from Puerto Padre. No matter how he tried to soften the blow, it was a brutal change for her, and she could not imagine the reason for it. On the day in the ice cream parlor when he told her he was going to marry, when he revealed the truth to her, she had reeled with panic, but then the possibility seemed so absurd that she forgot about it. In a very short while, however, she realized that he was behaving with inexplicable evasiveness, as if it was true, as if he were not sixty years older than she, but sixty years younger.
唯一的障碍是他与阿美利加·维库尼亚的关系。他继续让司机每星期六上午十点到寄宿学校去接她，但他不知道周末该拿她怎么办。他第一次没有亲自陪她，她对这一变化十分不悦。他将她托付给女佣，让她们带她去看下午场的电影，听儿童公园的露天音乐会，参加慈善抽奖；又或者为她安排好星期日的活动，让她和同学一起玩，为的就是不必再把她带进办公室后面那座隐秘的天堂——她第一次去过之后，就总想再去那里。他沉浸于对未来的崭新幻想之中，竟没有注意到，女人其实可以在三天内就变得成熟，而自从他到父亲港的机动帆船上把她接来，已经过去了整整三年。不管他如何想让这一变化进展温和，对她来说都是极其残忍的，而且她无法明白这其中的缘由。那天在冷饮店里，他告诉她真相，说自己就要结婚了，她霎时间被吓坏了，可随后又觉得这种可能性近乎荒谬，便又把它抛在脑后。然而，她很快看出来，他表现得就像真的一样，总是莫名其妙地支支吾吾、闪烁其词，就好像他不是比她大六十岁，而是比她小六十岁似的。
One Saturday afternoon, Florentino Ariza found her trying to type in his bedroom, and she was doing rather well, for she was studying typing at school. She had completed more than half a page of automatic writing, but it was not difficult to isolate an occasional phrase that revealed her state of mind. Florentino Ariza leaned over her shoulder to read what she had written. She was disturbed by his man’s heat, by his ragged breathing, by the scent on his clothes, which was the same as the scent on his pillow. She was no longer the little girl, the newcomer, whom he had undressed, one article of clothing at a time, with little baby games: first these little shoes for the little baby bear, then this little chemise for the little puppy dog, next these little flowered panties for the little bunny rabbit, and a little kiss on her papa’s delicious little dickey-bird. No: now she was a full-fledged woman, who liked to take the initiative. She continued typing with just one finger of her right hand, and with her left she felt for his leg, explored him, found him, felt him come to life, grow, heard him sigh with excitement, and his old man’s breathing became uneven and labored. She knew him: from that point on he was going to lose control, his speech would become disjointed, he would be at her mercy, and he would not find his way back until he had reached the end. She led him by the hand to the bed as if he were a blind beggar on the street, and she cut him into pieces with malicious tenderness; she added salt to taste, pepper, a clove of garlic, chopped onion, lemon juice, bay leaf, until he was seasoned and on the platter, and the oven was heated to the right temperature. There was no one in the house. The servant girls had gone out, and the masons and carpenters who were renovating the house did not work on Saturdays: they had the whole world to themselves. But on the edge of the abyss he came out of his ecstasy, moved her hand away, sat up, and said in a tremulous voice:
一个星期六的下午，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨看见她在他的卧室里试着用打字机打字。她打得相当不错，因为在学校学过这门功课。她已经打了多半页纸，全都是不假思索自动打出来的，但时不时就很容易从某个词中瞧出她的心境来。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨弯下身子，趴在她肩上读着她写的话。他那男人的热气、断断续续的呼吸，以及衣服上散发出的和枕头上一样的香水味，使得她一阵慌乱。她已不再是那个初来乍到的小姑娘了。那时，他得一件一件地为她脱掉衣服，像哄骗婴儿似的哄她说：先脱掉小鞋子，给小熊穿，再把小衬衫脱下来给小狗穿，再把小花衬裤脱下来给小兔子穿，现在，亲亲爸爸香喷喷的小鸟。不，她如今已成了一个真真正正、地地道道的女人，喜欢享有主动权。她继续用右手的一个指头打字，左手却在摸索他的大腿，探寻着它，找到了它，感觉到它又复活了、生长了、急促地喘着气，他那老人的呼吸变得磕磕绊绊，艰难无比。她了解他：从这一刻起，他就会失去控制，抛开理智，屈服于她的意志，在一切结束之前，无法再找到回头的路。她拉着他的手，慢慢把他带到床上，就像牵着一个走在街上的可怜的盲人。她带着居心不良的温柔，一块块地把他肢解，按照她的喜好撒上盐、胡椒，再放上一瓣蒜、一片月桂叶，倒进切碎的洋葱和柠檬汁，在盘中腌至恰到好处，而炉子早已调到合适温度，一切都准备妥当。家中没有别人。女佣们出门了，负责修缮房子的泥瓦匠和木匠星期六不干活——整个世界都是他们两个人的。但在深渊的边缘，他竟步出了销魂的仙境，推开她的手，坐起身来，用颤抖的声音说：
“Be careful, we have no rubbers.”
“小心，我们没有小橡胶套了。”
He was back in his element. At the end of six months he had heard nothing at all, and he found himself tossing and turning in bed until dawn, lost in the wasteland of a new kind of insomnia. He thought that Fermina Daza had opened the first letter because of its appearance, had seen the initial she knew from the letters of long ago, and had thrown it out to be burned with the rest of the trash without even taking the trouble to tear it up. Just seeing the envelopes of those that followed would be enough for her to do the same thing without even opening them, and to continue to do so until the end of time, while he came at last to his final written meditation. He did not believe that the woman existed who could resist her curiosity about half a year of almost daily letters when she did not even know the color of ink they were written in, but if such a woman existed, it had to be her.
他忙着自己的事情。六个月过去了，完全没有一点回音。他在床上辗转反侧，直到天明，迷失在一种新的失眠的荒漠之中。他想，费尔明娜·达萨一定由于那淡雅的信封打开了第一封信，也一定看到了那在往日的信中熟识的首字母，她一定是把它扔进了烧垃圾的火堆，甚至都不愿费事去撕碎它。此后的信，她也定是一看到信封便连拆也不拆地做出了同样处理，直到时间的尽头，而最终，他也文思枯竭，再写不出什么新鲜东西来了。他不相信这世上有女人能抵制住这样的好奇，对半年来每天收到的信是用什么颜色的墨水写的都不关心。但如果真有这样的女人，那也只可能是她。
She lay on her back in bed for a long time, thinking, and when she returned to school an hour early she was beyond all desire to cry, and she had sharpened her sense of smell along with her claws so that she could track down the miserable whore who had ruined her life. Florentino Ariza, on the other hand, made another masculine mis-judgment: he believed that she had been convinced of the futility of her desires and had resolved to forget him.
她仰面朝天地在床上躺了许久，一直在想。当她提前一小时返回寄宿学校时，已经完全不再有想哭的欲望了。她调整好嗅觉，磨尖了爪子，定要找出那只躲在背后搅乱她生活的狡兔的踪迹。而弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨再次犯了一个男人的错误：他以为她在自己的努力徒劳无功之后，已经决定忘记一切了。
It was at this time that Leona Cassiani celebrated her birthday and invited a small group of friends to her house. He was distracted and spilled chicken gravy on himself. She cleaned his lapel with the corner of his napkin dampened in a glass of water, and then she tied it around his neck like a bib to avoid a more serious accident: he looked like an old baby. She noticed that several times during dinner he took off his eyeglasses and dried them with his handkerchief because his eyes were watering. During coffee he fell asleep holding his cup in his hand, and she tried to take it away without waking him, but his embarrassed response was: “I was just resting my eyes.” Leona Cassiani went to bed astounded at how his age was beginning to show.
就在那几天前后，莱昂娜·卡西亚尼庆祝自己的生日，把为数不多的几个朋友邀请到她家。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨心不在焉，把鸡肉的酱汁洒在了身上。她把餐巾的一角在水杯中蘸湿，为他擦净衣服的翻领，接着又给他戴上围嘴，以免发生更糟糕的事故：这样一来，他简直就像一个老婴儿。她发现，用餐时他好几次把眼镜摘下来，用手帕擦拭，因为他的眼睛不停地流泪。喝咖啡时，他竟然手拿着杯子睡着了，她想不吵醒他，悄悄地把杯子接过来，可是他却惊醒了，尴尬地掩饰道：“我只是在休息眼睛。”莱昂娜·卡西亚尼上床睡觉时，吃惊地想着，他竟已老得这般明显。
Florentino Ariza felt that his old age was not a rushing torrent but a bottomless cistern where his memory drained away. His ingenuity was wearing thin. After patrolling the villa in La Manga for several days, he realized that this strategy from his youth would never break down the doors sealed by mourning. One morning, as he was looking for a number in the telephone directory, he happened to come across hers. He called. It rang many times, and at last he recognized her grave, husky voice: “Hello?” He hung up without speaking, but the infinite distance of that unapproachable voice weakened his morale.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨感到，暮年的岁月不是奔涌向前的激流，而是一个无底的地下水池，记忆从这里慢慢流走。他的智慧渐渐枯竭。在拉曼加的那座别墅周围转悠了几天之后，他意识到，用年轻时的手段终究难以敲开被葬礼封死的大门。一天早上，他在电话簿上寻找某个号码时，偶然找到了她的号码。他拨通了电话。铃声响了好几遍，终于，他听到并辨出她的声音，声音严肃而微弱：“喂？”他没有说话，挂上了话筒，那个虚无缥渺的声音感觉无限遥远，削弱了他的意志。
On the first anniversary of the death of Juvenal Urbino, the family sent out invitations to a memorial Mass at the Cathedral. Florentino Ariza had still received no reply, and this was the driving force behind his bold decision to attend the Mass although he had not been invited. It was a social event more ostentatious than emotional. The first few rows of pews were reserved for their lifetime owners, whose names were engraved on copper nameplates on the backs of their seats. Florentino Ariza was among the first to arrive so that he might sit where Fermina Daza could not pass by without seeing him. He thought that the best seats would be in the central nave, behind the reserved pews, but there were so many people he could not find a seat there either, and he had to sit in the nave for poor relations. From there he saw Fermina Daza walk in on her son’s arm, dressed in an unadorned long-sleeved black velvet dress buttoned all the way from her neck to the tips of her shoes, like a bishop’s cassock, and a narrow scarf of Castilian lace instead of the veiled hat worn by other widows, and even by many other ladies who longed for that condition. Her uncovered face shone like alabaster, her lanceolate eyes had a life of their own under the enormous chandeliers of the central nave, and as she walked she was so erect, so haughty, so self-possessed, that she seemed no older than her son. As he stood, Florentino Ariza leaned the tips of his fingers against the back of the pew until his dizziness passed, for he felt that he and she were not separated by seven paces, but existed in two different times.
胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生去世一周年时，他的家人送出请柬，邀请大家出席大教堂举行的纪念弥撒。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨此时仍没有收到任何回音。这促使他大胆决定，尽管没受到邀请，也要去参加弥撒。这是一次奢华多过伤感的社交活动。前几排的座位是终身及世袭的荣誉席位，椅背的铜牌上刻着主人的名字。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨是最早到达的客人之一，为的是能坐在一个费尔明娜·达萨必然会经过并且看见的位置上。他想，最佳位置应该是正殿，在那些保留座位的后面。但出席的人太多了，那里根本找不到空位子。于是，他不得不坐到了穷亲戚们所在的中殿。从那里，他看见费尔明娜·达萨挽着儿子的手臂走进来，穿着一袭黑色天鹅绒裙子，袖子长及手腕，没有佩戴任何首饰，一长排扣子从脖子直到脚尖，就像主教的长袍。她肩上搭着一块卡斯蒂利亚手工编织的窄披肩，而没有像其他寡妇，甚至许多渴望成为寡妇的女人那样头戴面纱帽。她那未施粉黛的脸颊发出一种雪花石膏般的光芒，柳叶形的眼睛在正殿巨大的吊灯下显现出特有的勃勃生机。她走路的时候，腰板是那样的笔直，神情是那样的高傲，姿态是那样的从容，看上去似乎还没有儿子年龄大。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨站在那里，用指尖撑着前排座椅的靠背，直到一阵眩晕的感觉过去，他感到自己和她不止七步之遥，而是处在两个不同的时空。
“Thank you for coming.”
“谢谢你来了。”
Through almost the entire ceremony, Fermina Daza stood in the family pew in front of the main altar, as elegant as when she attended the opera. But when it was over, she broke with convention and did not stay in her seat, according to the custom of the day, to receive the spiritual renewal of condolences, but made her way instead through the crowd to thank each one of the guests: an innovative gesture that was very much in harmony with her style and character. Greeting one guest after another, she at last reached the pews of the poor relations, and then she looked around to make certain she had not missed anyone she knew. At that moment Florentino Ariza felt a supernatural wind lifting him out of himself: she had seen him. Fermina Daza moved away from her companions with the same assurance she brought to everything in society, held out her hand, and with a very sweet smile, said to him:
费尔明娜·达萨在几乎整个仪式期间都站在正对主祭台的家族座位那儿，像看歌剧一样神态优雅。但最后，她打破礼拜仪式的常规，没有按照当时的习惯在原地接受人们向她重表哀悼之情，而是走了出来，向每一位来宾表示谢意：这是一个革新举动，与她的为人十分相配。她逐一向大家问候，最终来到穷亲戚的座位跟前。然后，她又环视了一下四周，以确保没有漏掉一位相识的客人。这时，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨感到有一股超自然的风将他从众人中推了出来：她看见了他。费尔明娜·达萨以她在社交场合一贯的敏捷自如离开陪伴在她身边的人，向他伸过手来，带着极为甜美的微笑对他说：
For she had not only received his letters, she had read them with great interest and had found in them serious and thoughtful reasons to go on living. She had been at the table, having breakfast with her daughter, when she received the first one. She opened it because of the novelty of its being typewritten, and a sudden blush burned her face when she recognized the initial of the signature. But she immediately regained her self-possession and put the letter in her apron pocket. She said: “It is a condolence letter from the government.” Her daughter was surprised: “All of them came already.” She was imperturbable: “This is another one.” Her intention was to burn the letter later, when she was away from her daughter’s questions, but she could not resist the temptation of looking it over first. She expected the reply that her insulting letter deserved, a letter that she began to regret the very moment she sent it, but from the majestic salutation and the subject of the first paragraph, she realized that something had changed in the world. She was so intrigued that she locked herself in her bedroom to read it at her ease before she burned it, and she read it three times without pausing.
这是因为，她不仅仅收到了他的信，还以极大的兴趣读完了，并在其中发现了严肃而发人深省的理由让她活下去。收到第一封信时，她正坐在餐桌前，和女儿一起吃早餐。因为信是用打字机打的，她好奇地拆开了。认出签名的首字母时，她的脸一下子红得像烧着了一般。但她很快就恢复了自然的神态，将信收进围裙的口袋里，说：“是政府的吊唁信。”她的女儿很惊讶：“所有的吊唁信都已经到了呀。”她泰然自若：“这是另一封。”她本打算等过后女儿不再追问的时候将信烧掉，可最终还是没能抵制住先看上一眼的诱惑。她以为信中是对她那封辱骂信应有的回应，事实上，那封信她刚一送出去便后悔了。可是，从庄重的称谓和第一段的主题，她便明白世界已经发生了变化。她如此好奇，于是把自己关在卧室里，以便在烧掉之前能从容地读上一读。结果，她一口气读了三遍。
It was a meditation on life, love, old age, death: ideas that had often fluttered around her head like nocturnal birds but dissolved into a trickle of feathers when she tried to catch hold of them. There they were, precise, simple, just as she would have liked to say them, and once again she grieved that her husband was not alive to discuss them with her as they used to discuss certain events of the day before going to sleep. In this way an unknown Florentino Ariza was revealed to he r, one possessed of a clear-sightedness that in no way corresponded to the feverish love letters of his youth or to the somber conduct of his entire life. They were, rather, the words of a man who, in the opinion of Aunt Escolástica, was inspired by the Ho ly Spirit, and this thought astounded her now as much as it had the first time. In any case, what most calmed her spirit was the certainty that this letter from a wise old man was not an attempt to repeat the impertinence of the night of the vigil over the body but a very noble way of erasing the past.
那是对人生、爱情、老年和死亡的思考：这些想法曾无数次像夜间的鸟儿一般扑扇着翅膀掠过她的头顶，可每当她想抓住它们时，它们就惊飞四散，只剩下散落的片片羽毛。而如今，它们就在这里，清晰明了，正如她自己原本想表达的那样。她又一次感到难过，丈夫已经不在了，无法再和他一起讨论这些，就像每晚睡前他们都会讨论这一天发生的事情一样。由此，她发现了一个陌生的弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨，他的真知灼见和他年轻时那些炽热的情书不相符，也和他一生阴郁的举止不相符。他的话更像是出自一个埃斯科拉斯蒂卡姑妈所认为的受到圣神启示的男人之口。这个想法又让她像第一次收到他的信时那样害怕起来。但无论如何，最令她安心的是，她确信这封由一个睿智老人所写的信并非试图重申葬礼那天的无礼言语，而是意在抹掉过去，可谓高尚之举。
That first year had been enough time for her to adjust to her widowhood. The purified memory of her husband, no longer an obstacle in her daily actions, in her private thoughts, in her simplest intentions, became a watchful presence that guided but did not hinder her. On the occasions when she truly needed him she would see him, not as an apparition but as flesh and blood. She was encouraged by the certainty that he was there, still alive but without his masculine whims, his patriarchal demands, his consuming need for her to love him in the same ritual of inopportune kisses and tender words with which he loved her. For now she understood him better than when he was alive, she understood the yearning of his love, the urgent need he felt to find in her the security that seemed to be the mainstay of his public life and that in reality he never possessed. One day, at the height of desperation, she had shouted at him: “You don’t understand how unhappy I am.” Unperturbed, he took off his eyeglasses with a characteristic gesture, he flooded her with the transparent waters of his childlike eyes, and in a single phrase he burdened her with the weight of his unbearable wisdom: “Always remember that the most important thing in a good marriage is not happiness, but stability.” With the first loneliness of her widowhood she had understood that the phrase did not conceal the miserable threat that she had attributed to it at the time, but was the lodestone that had given them both so many happy hours.
这最初的一年已足够她适应寡妇的生活。对丈夫的纯净回忆不再妨碍她的日常行动，不再妨碍她的内心思考，也不再妨碍她的一些最简单的意图了，而是变成一种时时注视着她的存在：指引她，但并不烦扰她。有时，她会看到他，并不是看到一个幽灵，而是一个有血有肉的人，出现在当真需要他的场合。确信他就在那里，她感到鼓舞。他还活着，但没有了男人的任性，没有了家长式的命令，也没有了那些令她精疲力竭的需求：时时要求她以他爱她的那些方式来爱他，比如不合时宜的亲吻，以及时时挂在嘴边的甜言蜜语。她比他活着的时候更加理解他了，理解他对爱的渴望，理解他迫切地需要在她身上找到足以支撑起他的社交生活的安全感，而事实上，这种安全感他从未得到过。曾有一天，她绝望之极，冲他喊道：“你就没有发现我一点也不幸福吗？”而他以他特有的姿势摘下眼镜，不温不火，用他那孩童般天真的眼睛中的一汪清水淹没了她，只说了一句话，就让她体会到他那令人难以忍受的智慧的全部分量：“你要永远记住，对于一对恩爱夫妻，最重要的不是幸福，而是稳定。”从守寡最初的寂寞时光开始，她便明白，这句话中隐藏的并不是她当初所认为的卑劣威胁，而是一块为两人带来过无数幸福时光的月亮宝石。
The letters that followed brought her complete calm. Still, she burned them after reading them with a growing interest, although burning them left her with a sense of guilt that she could not dissipate. So that when they began to be numbered, she found the moral justification she had been seeking for not destroying them. At any rate, her initial intention was not to keep them for herself but to wait for an opportunity to return them to Florentino Ariza so that something that seemed of such great human value would not be lost. The difficulty was that time passed and the letters continued to arrive, one every three or four days throughout the year, and she did not know how to return them without that appearing to be the rebuff she no longer wanted to give, and without having to explain everything in a letter that her pride would not permit her to write.
接下来的那些信最终使她平静下来。但不管怎样，她还是在怀着越来越浓厚的兴趣读过之后，便把它们烧掉了，尽管随着信一封封地被烧掉，她的心底渐渐沉积下一种挥之不去的愧疚。于是，当她开始收到有编号的信时，她终于找到了一直期待的不毁掉这些信的道德依据。无论如何，她最初的意图并非是为自己保留它们，而是想等待机会将它们还给弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨，以免这些在她看来对人类如此有用的东西被白白扔掉。但糟糕的是，随着时间流逝，信件一如既往地到达，整整一年里每隔三四天便收到一封，她却不知道如何将它们归还，才能既不让他难堪，因为她已不想再如此，又无需写一封信前去解释，因为她的骄傲不会允许她这样做。
On her many journeys through the world, Fermina Daza had bought every object that attracted her attention because of its novelty. She desired these things with a primitive impulse that her husband was happy to rationalize, and they were beautiful, useful objects as long as they remained in their original environment, in the show windows of Rome, Paris, London, or in the New York, vibrating to the Charleston, where skyscrapers were beginning to grow, but they could not withstand the test of Strauss waltzes with pork cracklings or Poetic Festivals when it was ninety degrees in the shade. And so she would return with half a dozen enormous standing trunks made of polished metal, with copper locks and corners like decorated coffins, lady and mistress of the world’s latest marvels, which were worth their price not in gold but in the fleeting moment when someone from her local world would see the m for the first time. For that is why they had been bought: so that others could see them. She became aware of her frivolous public image long before she began to grow old, and in the house she was often heard to say: “We have to get rid of all these trinkets; there’s no room to turn around.” Dr. Urbino would laugh at her fruitless efforts, for he knew that the emptied spaces were only going to be filled again. But she persisted, because it was true that there was no room for anything else and nothing anywhere served any purpose, not the shirts hanging on the doorknobs or the overcoats for European winters squeezed into the kitchen cupboards. So that on a morning when she awoke in high spirits she would raze the clothes closets, empty the trunks, tear apart the attics, and wage a war of separation against the piles of clothing that had been seen once too often, the hats she had never worn because there had been no occasion to wear them while they were still in fashion, the shoes copied by European artists from those used by empresses for their coronations, and which were scorned here by highborn ladies because they were identical to the ones that black women bought at the market to wear in the house. For the entire morning the interior terrace would be in a state of crisis, and in the house it would be difficult to breathe because of bitter gusts from the mothballs. But in a few hours order would be reestablished because she at last took pity on so much silk strewn on the floor, so many leftover brocades and useless pieces of passementerie, so many silver fox tails, all condemned to the fire.
在多次周游世界的旅行中，费尔明娜·达萨买回所有因新奇而引起她注意的东西。她想要得到它们都是因为一时的冲动，但丈夫却乐于为她的冲动找出合适的理由。这些东西摆在它们原来的环境中，都是美丽且有用的，比如在罗马、巴黎、伦敦的玻璃橱窗里，或是在正因查尔斯顿舞而抖动不止、一座座摩天大楼拔地而起的纽约的橱窗里。然而，它们经不起施特劳斯的圆舞曲、煎猪皮，以及在四十度的高温下找个阴凉处举行节日庆典的考验。她每次回来都带着五六个巨大的立式箱子，由上过漆的金属制成，锁和包角都是铜的，就像神话故事中的棺材。带回来的东西让她成为世界最新奇迹的代言人，可实际上，除了他们本地的圈中人看见这些东西的第一瞬间，其余时候，它们根本不值那高昂的价格。不过，它们本来也就是为了让别人看见一次才买的。她在步入老年之前很久，就已经意识到自己的公众形象不过是虚荣，因而常常能听见她在家里说：“得弄走这些破烂才行，都没有住的地方了。”乌尔比诺医生嘲笑她的这种想法徒劳无益，因为他知道，腾出的地方只会被重新填满。但是她坚持要这样做，因为多一件东西确实也放不下了，更何况所有地方没有一件东西是真正能派上点用场的，比如挂在门把手上的那些衬衫，还有压了又压才塞进厨房柜子的欧洲冬衣。于是，一天早晨，她情绪高涨地爬起床来，翻箱倒柜，把阁楼翻了个底朝天，发动了一场战争般的扫荡，清理了一堆堆过时已久的衣服、一顶顶在流行时都没有机会戴的帽子，以及欧洲设计师们依据女王们加冕时穿的式样设计的鞋子——它们在本地被那些门第高贵的小姐们鄙视，因为款式和黑女人从市场上买回来的居家便鞋一模一样。整个早上，内阳台一直处于一片忙乱之中，樟脑球散发出的一阵阵刺鼻气味让家里的人呼吸困难。但几小时后，家中又恢复了平静，因为她最终心软了，那么多的丝绸衣物被扔在地上，那么多的锦缎、废弃的金银丝带、蓝狐尾，竟通通要被扔进火堆。
“It is a sin to burn this,” she would say, “when so many people do not even have enough to eat.”
“烧掉这些东西真是罪过，”她说，“还有那么多人连饭都吃不上呢。”
And so the burning was postponed, it was always postponed, and things were only shifted from their places of privilege to the stables that had been transformed into storage bins for remnants, while the spaces that had been cleared, just as he predicted, began to fill up again, to overflow with things that lived for a moment and then went to die in the closets: until the next time. She would say: “Someone should invent something to do with things you cannot use anymore but that you still cannot throw out.” That was true: she was dismayed by the voracity with which objects kept invading living spaces, displacing the humans, forcing them back into the corners, until Fermina Daza pushed the objects out of sight. For she was not as ordered as people thought, but she did have her own desperate method for appearing to be so: she hid the disorder. The day that Juvenal Urbino died, they had to empty out half of his study and pile the things in the bedrooms so there would be space to lay out the body.
就这样，焚烧活动被推迟了，而且是无限期地推迟。东西不过是换了个地方，从特权的位置挪到已变成废旧物品仓库的旧马厩里，而腾出来的空间，正如他所言，又重新被塞进新的东西，满得几乎要溢出来。这些东西都只为一刻而活，注定要死在衣橱里，直到下一次清理焚烧。她说：“真该发明个办法，好处理那些既派不上用场又不能扔掉的东西。”正是如此：物品的贪婪使费尔明娜·达萨害怕，它们逐渐侵占着空间，代替了人，把人挤到角落里去生活，直到她把它们放进看不见的地方去。她不像别人想象的那样有条理，但她有自己的办法，一个绝望中的办法：把混乱的东西藏起来。在胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺去世那天，大家不得不腾出半间书房，把东西都堆到卧室里去，以便有个地方为他守灵。
Death’s passage through the house brought the solution. Once she had burned her husband’s clothes, Fermina Daza realized that her hand had not trembled, and on the same impulse she continued to light the fire at regular intervals, throwing everything on it, old and new, not thinking about the envy of the rich or the vengeance of the poor who were dying of hunger. Finally, she had the mango tree cut back at the roots until there was nothing left of that misfortune, and she gave the live parrot to the new Museum of the City. Only then did she draw a free breath in the kind of house she had always dreamed of: large, easy, and all hers.
死神的来访使问题得到了解决。在烧掉了丈夫的衣服后，费尔明娜·达萨发现自己的手并没有颤抖。于是，她以同样的动力继续每隔一段时间就点起火堆，把所有的东西都丢进去，不管是新的还是旧的，也不顾忌富人的忌妒和饿得要死的穷人的报复。最后，她让人把芒果树连根砍倒，让这场不幸彻底不留一点痕迹，又将活着的鹦鹉赠给了新建的城市博物馆。直到这时，她才得以在这个家里畅快地呼吸，像她一直梦想的那样：一个宽敞、自由、只属于她的家。
Her daughter Ofelia spent three months with her and then returned to New Orleans. Her son brought his family to lunch on Sundays and as often as he could during the week. Fermina Daza’s closest friends began to visit her once she had overcome the crisis of her mourning, they played cards facing the bare patio, they tried out new recipes, they brought her up to date on the secret life of the insatiable world that continued to exist without her. One of the most faithful was Lucrecia del Real del Obispo, an aristocrat of the old school who had always been a good friend and who drew even closer after the death of Juvenal Urbino. Stiff with arthritis and repenting her wayward life, in those days Lucrecia del Real not only provided her with the best company, she also consulted with her regarding the civic and secular projects that were being arranged in the city, and this made her feel useful for her own sake and not because of the protective shadow of her husband. And yet she was never so closely identified with him as she was then, for she was no longer called by her maiden name, and she became known as the Widow Urbino.
女儿奥菲利娅陪伴她三个月后就回新奥尔良去了。儿子每星期日都带着家人过来吃午餐，其他日子，只要有可能也会来。服丧期一过，费尔明娜·达萨最亲近的女友们便开始来看望她，面对着光秃秃的院子玩牌，试验新菜谱，还把她缺席的这些日子里这个依旧运转的贪婪世界里的种种秘闻讲给她听，以让她跟上潮流。最常来的女友之一是卢克雷西娅·德尔雷亚尔·德尔奥比斯波，一个老派贵族，费尔明娜·达萨一直和她很要好，自从胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺死后，她和她更加亲近。被关节炎折磨得身体僵硬并对自己昔日的放荡生活感到懊悔的卢克雷西娅·德尔雷亚尔不仅是她最好的女伴，还常常会向她询问城中正在酝酿什么爱国举动或世俗活动。这让她感到自己还是有用的，而不是仅仅倚仗着丈夫的保护伞。然而，人们从来没有像现在这样把她同丈夫视为一体，大家不再像以前那样叫她做姑娘时的名字，而是开始称呼她乌尔比诺的寡妇。
Two days later she received a different kind of letter from him: handwritten on linen paper and his complete name inscribed with great clarity on the back of the envelope. It was the same ornate handwriting as in his earlier letters, the same will to lyricism, but applied to a simple paragraph of gratitude for the courtesy of her greeting in the Cathedral. For several days after she read the letter Fermina Daza continued to think about it with troubled memories, but with a conscience so clear that on the following Thursday she suddenly asked Lucrecia del Real del Obispo if she happened to know Florentino Ariza, the, owner of the riverboats. Lucrecia replied that she did: “He seems to be a wandering succubus.” She repeated the common gossip that he had never had a woman although he was such a good catch, and that he had a secret office where he took the boys he pursued at night along the docks. Fermina Daza had heard that story for as long as she could remember, and she had never believed it or given it any importance. But when she heard it repeated with so much conviction by Lucrecia del Real del Obispo, who had also been rumored at one time to have strange tastes, she could not resist the urge to clarify matters. She said she had known Florentino Ariza since he was a boy. She reminded her that his mother had owned a notions shop on the Street of Windows and also bought old shirts and sheets, which she unraveled and sold as bandages during the civil wars. And she concluded with conviction: “He is an honorable man, and he is the soul of tact.” She was so vehement that Lucrecia took back what she had said: “When all is said and done, they also say the same sort of thing about me.” Fermina Daza was not curious enough to ask herself why she was making so passionate a defense of a man who had been no more than a shadow in her life. She continued to think about him, above all when the mail arrived without another letter from him. Two weeks of silence had gone by when one of the servant girls woke her during her siesta with a warning whisper:
两天以后，她收到一封他寄来的与往日截然不同的信，是手写的，用的是一张亚麻纸，信封背面清晰地署了寄信人的全名。和早年的那些信一样，同样的花体字，同样的情真意切，但内容就只有一段简短的感激之言，感谢费尔明娜·达萨在大教堂里对他与众不同的问候。读过之后的好几天里，费尔明娜·达萨都怀着一种躁动不断地想起这封信。她胸怀坦荡，于是，在接下来的那个星期四，她突兀地问起卢克雷西娅·德尔雷亚尔·德尔奥比斯波，问她是否凑巧认识弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨，内河航运公司的老板。卢克雷西娅回答说认识：“好像是个放荡的魔鬼。”她重复了那个流行的说法，说他从不结识女人，但为人很大方，还说他有一间秘密办公室，专为把夜晚在码头上弄到手的男孩带去。费尔明娜·达萨几乎自打有记忆以来就听到这种传言，她从来不信，也不放在心上。但她听到也曾一度被认为有些怪异嗜好的卢克雷西娅·德尔雷亚尔·德尔奥比斯波也言之凿凿地说起此事时，忍不住要即刻把事情解释清楚。她告诉她，自己从小就认识弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨。她还说，记得他的母亲在窗户街有一家杂货铺，除此之外，还在内战时期收购旧衬衫和床单，拆开后当作急救药棉出售。最后，她十分肯定地得出结论：“他是个正经人，全凭双手养活自己。”见她说得如此激动，卢克雷西娅收回了自己的话：“说到底，别人也是这样说我的。”费尔明娜·达萨并没有好奇地自问，为何她会如此热切地维护一个不过是她生活中的影子的男人。她继续想着他，特别是当邮差到来却没有带来他的新信时。就这样，无声无息地过了两个星期，直到这天，一个女佣用慌张的口吻小声地在她耳边把她从午睡中叫醒。
It seemed incredible, but as the first anniversary of her husband’s death approached, Fermina Daza felt herself entering a place that was shady, cool, quiet: the grove of the irremediable. She was not yet aware, and would not be for several months, of how much the written meditations of Florentino Ariza had helped her to recover her peace of mind. Applied to her own experiences, they were what allowed her to understand her own life and to await the designs of old age with serenity. Their meeting at the memorial Mass was a providential opportunity for her to let Florentino Ariza know that she, too, thanks to his letters of encouragement, was prepared to erase the past.
这让她无法理解。但随着丈夫去世一周年的临近，费尔明娜·达萨觉得自己渐渐进入一种阴凉、清爽、安静的环境之中：无法避免的必然之境。但她还不十分清楚，之后的很多个月里她也没有意识到，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨笔下的见解对她重获精神的平静起到了多大的作用。她将他的思考付诸实践，这才渐渐懂得了自己的生活，平静地等待着暮年的种种安排。周年弥撒上的相遇是上天赐予的一次机会，她借此让弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨明白，多亏了他那些令人鼓舞的信，她也正准备忘掉过去。
He was there. Fermina Daza’s first reaction was panic. She thought no, he should come back another day at a more appropriate ho ur, she was in no condition to receive visitors, there was nothing to talk about. But she recovered instantly and told her to show him into the drawing room and bring him coffee, while she tidied herself before seeing him. Florentino Ariza had waited at the street door, burning under the infernal three o’clock sun, but in full control of the situation. He was prepared not to be received, even with an amiable excuse, and that certainty kept him calm. But the decisiveness of her message shook him to his very marrow, and when he walked into the cool shadows of the drawing room he did not have time to think about the miracle he was experiencing because his intestines suddenly filled in an explosion of painful foam. He sat down, holding his breath, hounded by the damnable memory of the bird droppings on his first love letter, and he remained motionless in the shadowy darkness until the first attack of shivering had passed, resolved to accept any mishap at that moment except this unjust misfortune.
他真的来了。费尔明娜·达萨的第一反应是惊慌。她甚至想，不行，让他改日找个合适的时间再来吧，她现在无法接待来访，而且也没有什么可谈的。但她马上镇定下来，吩咐女佣把他带到客厅，给他送上一杯咖啡，她收拾好就去见他。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨等在临街的大门前，在下午三点地狱般的烈日下炙烤着自己，但自信十足。他已做好被拒绝的准备，尽管她的借口很可能是和善的。确信了这一点反倒使他非常平静。但她传来的口信之坚决让他颤至骨髓。走进阴凉的客厅中时，他根本没时间去思考自己正在经历的这一奇迹，因为他的腹部突然胀起来，像要爆炸一般，充满了疼痛的气泡。他屏住呼吸坐下来，被该死的回忆纠缠着，想起他的第一封情书落上鸟粪的情景。他一动不动地坐在阴凉处，第一阵寒战过去之后，他决心在此时接受任何不幸，只要不让那件不公平的倒霉事重演就行。
“Señora,” she said, “Don Florentino is here.”
“夫人，”女佣对她说，“弗洛伦蒂诺先生来了。”
He knew himself well: despite his congenital constipation, his belly had betrayed him in public three or four times in the course of his many years, and those three or four times he had been obliged to give in. Only on those occasions, and on others of equal urgency, did he realize the truth of the words that he liked to repeat in jest: “I do not believe in God, but I am afraid of Him.” He did not have time for doubts: he tried to say any prayer he could remember, but he could not think of a single one. When he was a boy, another boy had taught him magic words for hitting a bird with a stone: “Aim, aim, got my aim — if I miss you I’m not to blame.” He used it when he went to the country for the first time with a new slingshot, and the bird fell down dead. In a confused way he thought that one thing had something to do with the other, and he repeated the formula now with the fervor of a prayer, but it did not have the desired effect. A twisting in his guts like the coil of a spring lifted him from his seat, the foaming in his belly grew thicker and more painful, it grumbled a lament and left him covered with icy sweat. The maid who brought him the coffee was frightened by his corpse’s face. He sighed: “It’s the heat.” She opened the window, thinking she would make him more comfortable, but the afternoon sun hit him full in the face and she had to close it again. He knew he could not hold out another moment, and then Fermina Daza came in, almost invisible in the darkness, dismayed at seeing him in such a state.
他非常了解自己：虽然患有先天性便秘，但这么多年来，肚子还是有三四次当众背叛了他，而每一次他都不得不投降。只有在那几次，以及另外几次紧急情况中，他才发现自己开玩笑时常说的一句话千真万确：“我不信上帝，但我怕上帝。”他来不及去怀疑，试图找出任何一句所能记得的祈祷词来祷告，却一句也找不到。小时候，另一个小孩曾教过他一句用石头打鸟儿的神奇咒语：“打中，打中，若打不中，就把你变。”他第一次上山时，用一把新弹弓试验了这句咒语，鸟儿果然被击中，掉下来死了。他迷茫地想，一件事和另一件事之间总有些关联，便带着祈祷的热情重复了这句咒语，但没有产生同样的效果。肠子像根螺旋轴似的绞动着，使得他从椅子上站了起来，肚子里的气泡越来越密，越来越疼，最后发出了一声呻吟，他则出了一身冷汗。给他送咖啡的女仆看见他死人般的脸色，吓了一跳。他叹了一口气：“是因为热。”她打开窗，以为这样会使他满意，可下午的太阳正好照到他脸上，她不得不又把窗户关上。他心里明白，再多一分钟自己也忍不了了。正在此时，费尔明娜·达萨出现了，她的身影在阴暗之中几乎看不清楚。看到他这副样子，她也吓坏了。
He suffered less from the deadly griping of his bowels than from the thought that she might hear them bubbling. But he managed to endure just an instant longer to say no, he had only passed by to ask her when he might visit. Still standing, she said to him in confusion: “Well, you are here now.” And she invited him to the terrace in the patio, where it was cooler. He refused in a voice that seemed to her like a sigh of sorrow.
比起要命的绞痛，若是让她听见自己肚子里叽里咕噜的声音，他会更加痛苦。他尽全力要多忍片刻，说了一声“不”，并说自己此次前来是为了问她何时能接受他的拜访。她站在那儿，困惑地说：“可您已经在这里了呀。”她请他随她到院子里的露台上去，那里会凉快些。他拒绝了，声音在她听来更像一声遗憾的叹息。
“You can take off your jacket,” she said to him.
“您可以脱掉外套。”她对他说。
“I beg you, let it be tomorrow,” he said.
“我恳求您，明天吧。”
She remembered that tomorrow was Thursday, the day when Lucrecia del Real del Obispo made her regular visit, but she had the perfect solution: “The day after tomorrow at five o’clock.” Florentino Ariza thanked her, bid an urgent farewell with his hat, and left without tasting the coffee. She stood in the middle of the drawing room, puzzled, not understanding what had just happened, until the sound of his automobile’s backfiring faded at the end of the street. Then Florentino Ariza shifted into a less painful position in the back seat, closed his eyes, relaxed his muscles, and surrendered to the will of his body. It was like being reborn. The driver, who after so many years in his service was no longer surprised at anything, remained impassive. But when he opened the door for him in front of his house, he said:
她想起明天是星期四，是卢克雷西娅·德尔雷亚尔·德尔奥比斯波定时来访的日子，但她还是给了他一个不容申辩的解决办法：“后天下午五点。”弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨向她表示了感谢，拿着帽子匆忙地做了一个告别的姿势，一口咖啡也没喝就走了。她困惑地站在大厅中央，不明白刚才到底发生了什么事，直到汽车的声音消失在街道尽头。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨在车后座上找了个可以减轻疼痛的姿势，闭上双眼，放松肌肉，让自己屈从于身体的意愿。他仿佛得到了重生。司机为他开了那么多年车，早已见怪不怪，对此泰然处之。但在家门口为他打开车门时，司机对他说：
“Be careful, Don Floro, that looks like cholera.”
“您要当心啊，弗洛伦先生，这可有点像霍乱。”
But it was only his usual ailment. Florentino Ariza thanked God for that on Friday, at five o’clock sharp, when the maid led him through the darkness of the drawing room to the terrace in the patio, where he saw Fermina Daza sitting beside a small table set for two. She offered him tea, chocolate, or coffee. Florentino Ariza asked for coffee, very hot and very strong, and she told the maid: “The usual for me.” The usual was a strong infusion of different kinds of Oriental teas, which raised her spirits after her siesta. By the time she had emptied the teapot and he the coffeepot, they had both attempted and then broken off several topics of conversation, not so much because they were really interested in them but in order to avoid others that neither dared to broach. They were both intimidated, they could not understand what they were doing so far from their youth on a terrace with checkerboard tiles in a house that belonged to no one and that was still redolent of cemetery flowers. It was the first time in half a century that they had been so close and had enough time to look at each other with some serenity, and they had seen each other for what they were: two old people, ambushed by death, who had nothing in common except the memory of an ephemeral past that was no longer theirs but belonged to two young people who had vanished and who could have been their grandchildren. She thought that he would at last be convinced of the unreality of his dream, and that this would redeem his insolence.
幸好，这不过是老毛病。星期五下午五点整，当女仆领他穿过阴凉的客厅，来到院子里的露台上时，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨为此感谢了上帝。在那里，他见到了费尔明娜·达萨，她正坐在为两人准备好的小桌前。她问他要茶、巧克力，还是咖啡。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨要了咖啡，那种很热很浓的咖啡，她则吩咐女仆说：“我还是老样子。”所谓老样子，就是好几种东方茶叶混合在一起的茶，可以在午睡后为她提神。她喝完一壶茶的时候，他也喝完了一壶咖啡。他们已经试着开始并又中断了好几个话题，并非因为真的对这些话题感兴趣，而是因为想避开另外一些无论他还是她都不敢触及的话题。两人都有些胆怯，都不知道在距离年轻岁月已如此遥远的时候，在一座不属于他们的房子里，在用来下象棋的露台上，在还飘着墓地花香的地方，究竟要做些什么。这是半个世纪后两人第一次面对面地坐在一起，距离是如此之近，并且有充足的时间静静地看着对方。他们看得如此清楚：这两个被死神窥视的老人，没有旁的什么共同之处，一起享有的只是对那个短暂过去的回忆，然而那个回忆早已不再属于他们，而是属于两个消失了的年轻人，那两个人足可以做他们的孙子了。她想，他最终会说服自己，会看到他的梦想是多么的不现实，从而把他从荒唐中解救出来。
In order to avoid uncomfortable silences or undesirable subjects, she asked obvious questions about riverboats. It seemed incredible that he, the owner, had only traveled the river once, many years ago, before he had anything to do with the company. She did not know his reasons, and he would have been willing to sell his soul if he could have told them to her. She did not know the river either. Her husband had an aversion to the air of the Andes that he concealed with a variety of excuses: the dangers to the heart of the altitude, the risks of pneumonia, the duplicity of the people, the injustices of centralism. And so they knew half the world, but they did not know their own country. Nowadays there was a Junkers seaplane that flew from town to town along the basin of the Magdalena like an aluminum grasshopper, with two crew members, six passengers, and many sacks of mail. Florentino Ariza commented: “It is like a flying coffin.” She had been on the first balloon flight and had experienced no fear, but she could hardly believe that she was the same person who had dared such an adventure. She said: “Things have changed.” Meaning that she was the one who had changed, and not the means of transportation.
为避免尴尬的沉默或不愿触及的话题，她问了一些有关内河船的浅显问题。令人难以置信的是，他作为船主，只做过一次河上旅行，还是在多年以前，那时他和这家公司还没有任何关系。她不知道其中的原因，而如果能够告诉她，他真愿为此付出灵魂。而且她也不了解河道，她丈夫厌恶安第斯山地区的空气，却找出各种理由来掩饰，说什么高山对心脏有危险呀，有得肺炎的可能呀，那里的人虚伪狡诈呀，集权主义的不公正呀，等等。所以，他们走遍半个世界，却不了解自己的国家。现在，有一种容克斯水上飞机，能沿马格达莱纳河流域从一个村镇飞到另一个村镇，就像铝做的蚱蜢一样，上面载着两名飞行员、六名乘客，还有一袋袋的邮件。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨评价道：“就像一具空中棺材。”她参加过首次气球旅行，当时一点儿也没有感到害怕，但如今她几乎难以置信，那个敢于如此冒险的人是她自己。她说：“一切都变了。”她是指她变了，而不是旅行的方式变了。
At times the sound of airplanes took her by surprise. She had seen them flying very low and performing acrobatic maneuvers on the centenary of the death of The Liberator. One of them, as black as an enormous turkey buzzard, grazed the roofs of the houses in La Manga, left a piece of wing in a nearby tree, and was caught in the electrical wires. But not even that had convinced Fermina Daza of the existence of airplanes. In recent years she had not even had the curiosity to go to Manzanillo Bay, where seaplanes landed on the water after the police launches had warned away the fishermen’s canoes and the growing numbers of recreational boats. Because of her age, she had been chosen to greet Charles Lindbergh with a bouquet of roses when he came here on his goodwill flight, and she could not understand how a man who was so tall, so blond, so handsome, could go up in a contraption that looked as if it were made of corrugated tin and that two mechanics had to push by the tail to help lift it off the ground. She just could not get it through her head that airplanes not much larger than that one could carry eight people. On the other hand, she had heard that the riverboats were a delight because they did not roll like ocean liners, although there were other, more serious dangers, such as sandbars and attacks by bandits.
有时，飞机的声音让她吃惊。她在解放者逝世一百周年时看过飞行特技表演，它们飞得低极了，其中一架，黑得就像一只巨大的兀鹫，擦着拉曼加的房顶飞了过去，在邻居家的一棵树上碰掉一块翅膀，最后挂在了电线上。即便这样，费尔明娜·达萨还是没有接受飞机这种东西的存在。最近几年，她也完全没有兴趣到曼萨尼略湾去看看：自从警卫艇把渔民的独木舟和数量越来越多的游艇都赶走后，水上飞机就降落在那里。她都这么老了，人们还选她带着一束玫瑰花去迎接兴致勃勃开着飞机前来的查尔斯·林白，她不理解，一个那么英俊魁梧、头发金黄的男人，怎么会坐在那样一个皱巴巴的马口铁家伙里升到空中去呢，还得有两名机械师推着尾巴帮助那玩意儿起飞。而一些飞机看上去也不比那一架大多少，竟可以同时装下八个人，这个想法更是无论如何也塞不进她脑袋里。相反，她倒听说，乘坐内河船旅行是很惬意的，因为不会像海轮那么摇晃，但也有另一些更严重的威胁，比如浅滩和强盗的袭击。
Florentino Ariza explained that those were all legends from another time: these days the riverboats had ballrooms and cabins as spacious and luxurious as hotel rooms, with private baths and electric fans, and there had been no armed attacks since the last civil war. He also explained, with the satisfaction of a personal triumph, that these advances were due more than anything else to the freedom of navigation that he had fought for and which had stimulated competition: instead of a single company, as in the past, there were now three, which were very active and prosperous. Nevertheless, the rapid progress of aviation was a real threat to all of them. She tried to console him: boats would always exist because there were not many people crazy enough to get into a contraption that seemed to go against nature. Then Florentino Ariza spoke of improvements in mail service, transportation as well as delivery, in an effort to have her talk about his letters. But he was not successful.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨向她解释说，那都是些过去的传奇：现在的船上有舞厅，有像饭店房间一样宽敞、豪华的客舱，里面有私人卫生间，还装有电风扇。而最后一次内战结束之后，武装抢劫的事就再也没有发生过。他还得意地告诉她，这些进步多要归功于他所倡导的航运自由，由此鼓励了竞争：原来的独家经营被取代，如今有了三家活跃、繁荣的公司。然而，航空事业的迅速发展对所有航运公司构成了真正的威胁。她试图安慰他，轮船将会永远存在下去，因为愿意钻进那个看上去违反自然的玩意儿的人并不多。最后，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨说到邮政的发展，既包括运输也包括投递，试图引导她提起他写的那些信。但他没有达到目的。
Soon afterward, however, the occasion arose on its own. They had moved far afield of the subject when a maid interrupted them to hand Fermina Daza a letter that had just arrived by special urban mail, a recent creation that used the same method of distribution as telegrams. As always, she could not find her reading glasses. Florentino Ariza remained calm.
然而，不一会儿，机会自己来了。就在他们远离这个话题时，女仆打断了他们，交给费尔明娜·达萨一封刚刚由城市特殊邮政送来的信，这是新开创的业务，和电报使用的是同一个分发系统。像往常一样，她又找不到看信的眼镜了。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨保持了平静。
“Of course,” she said. “After all, letters belong to the person who writes them. Don’t you agree?”
“当然。”她说，“归根到底，信是属于写信人的。不是吗？”
And so it was. He had written it the day before, in a terrible state of depression because he could not overcome the embarrassment of his first frustrated visit. In it he begged her pardon for the impertinence of attempting to visit her without first obtaining her permission, and he promised never to return. He had mailed it without thinking, and when he did have second thoughts it was too late to retrieve it. But he did not believe so many explanations were necessary, and he simply asked Fermina Daza please not to read the letter.
的确如此。这封信是他前一天写的，当时他还无法摆脱第一次见面失败的羞愧，处于极度的沮丧之中。在信里，他请求她原谅自己没有事先征得允许就冒昧拜访的无礼行为，并且放弃了再次上门的打算。他没有再想第二遍，就把信投进了信筒，等到细想时已经太迟，信已经拿不回来了。然而，他觉得没有必要解释这些，只是请求费尔明娜·达萨不要再看这封信了。
“I do,” he said. “That is why they are the first things returned when an affair is ended.”
“正是，”他说，“所以，当关系破裂时，首先退还的就是信件。”
“That will not be necessary,” he said. “The letter is mine.”
“没必要找了，”他说，“这信是我写的。”
He made a bold move.
他往前迈出了大胆的一步。
She ignored his hidden intentions and returned the letter to him, saying: “It is a shame that I cannot read it, because the others have helped me a great deal.” He took a deep breath, astounded that she had said so much more than he had hoped for in so spontaneous a manner, and he said: “You cannot imagine how happy I am to know that.”
她没有听出他的弦外之音，把信还给了他，说：“不能读这封信真令人遗憾，因为之前的信让我获益良多。”他深深地吸了一口气，她说得那么自然，远超他的期待，令他惊诧不已。他对她说：“您想象不到，能听到您这样说，我有多么幸福。”
But she changed the subject, and he could not manage to bring it up again for the rest of the afternoon.
但是她改变了话题，下午余下的时光里，他都没能让她继续说起这件事。
“Come back whenever you like,” she said. “I am almost always alone.”
“您可以在任何想来的时候来，”她说，“我几乎总是一个人。”
Four days later, on Tuesday, he returned unannounced, and she did not wait for the tea to be served to tell him how much his letters had helped her. He said that they were not letters in the strict sense of the word, but pages from a book that he would like to write. She, too, had understood them in that way. In fact, she had intended to return them, if he would not take that as an insult, so that they could be put to better use. She continued speaking of how they had helped her during this difficult time, with so much enthusiasm, so much gratitude, perhaps with so much affection, that Florentino Ariza risked something more than a bold move: it was a somersault.
四天后的星期二，他没有事先通知就又来了。没等仆人端上茶，她就对他讲起他那些信令她多么受益。他说，严格来讲，那些并不是信，而是他很想写的一部书里的零散篇章。而她也正是这样看的。因此，如果他不会把这当作一种轻视的话，她很想把信还给他，以便让它们有更好的用途。她继续讲着那些信在她最艰难的紧要关头给她带来的教益，说得那么热情激动，充满感激，甚至或许还满怀着深情，以至于让弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨大起了胆子，不只是又往前迈了一步，而是拼死向前一跃。
He left well after six o’clock, as they were beginning to turn on the lights in the house. He felt more secure but did not have many illusions, because he could not forget Fermina Daza’s fickle character and unpredictable reactions at the age of twenty, and he had no reason to think that she had changed. Therefore he risked asking, with sincere humility, if he might return another day, and once again her reply took him by surprise.
六点过后，屋里四处亮起灯来，他起身告辞。他感到信心更加充足，却也不敢抱过多幻想，因为他没有忘记费尔明娜·达萨二十岁时反复无常的性格和令人无法预知的反应，他可没有什么理由认为她已经改变了。因此，他怀着真诚的谦卑，鼓起勇气问她自己日后能否再来。她的回答又让他大吃一惊。
It was a forbidden word: “before.” She felt the chimerical angel of the past flying overhead, and she tried to elude it. But he went even further: “Before, I mean, in our letters.” She was annoyed, and she had to make a serious effort to conceal it. But he knew, and he realized that he had to move with more tact, although the blunder showed him that her temper was still as short as it had been in her youth although she had learned to soften it.
这是个禁忌的词：从前。她仿佛看到曾经的那个空想天使又从身边经过，于是试图逃避。但他又深入一步：“我是说，在我们从前的信里。”她有些不悦，不得不做出极大努力来掩饰这一点。但他还是发现了，于是明白自己应该更加小心地摸索前进。虽然这个挫折向他表明，她仍和年轻时一样难以接近，但她毕竟已经学会让自己表现得温和一些了。
“We called each other tú before,” he said.
“从前我们是以‘你’相称的。”他说。
“I mean,” he said, “that these letters are something very different.”
“我的意思是，”他说，“这些信已经完全不同了。”
She sat with her second cup of tea halfway to her mouth and rebuked him with eyes that had survived so many inclemencies.
她的第二杯茶停在了半途，一双毫不留情的眼睛指责着他。
“Everything in the world has changed,” she said.
“世界上的一切都变了。”她说。
“I have not,” he said. “Have you?”
“我没有变，”他说，“您呢？”
“By now it does not matter,” she said. “I have just turned seventy-two.”
“已经无所谓了。”她说，“我都七十二岁了。”
Florentino Ariza felt the blow in the very center of his heart. He would have liked to find a reply as rapid and well aimed as an arrow, but the burden of his age defeated him: he had never been so exhausted by so brief a conversation, he felt pain in his heart, and each beat echoed with a metallic resonance in his arteries. He felt old, forlorn, useless, and his desire to cry was so urgent that he could not speak. They finished their second cup in a silence furrowed by presentiments, and when she spoke again it was to ask a maid to bring her the folder of letters. He was on the verge of asking her to keep them for herself, since he had made carbon copies, but he thought this precaution would seem ignoble. There was nothing else to say. Before he left he suggested coming back on the following Tuesday at the same time. She asked herself whether she should be so acquiescent.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨心里受到一击。他本想像箭一般快速地凭借本能做出反驳，但年龄的重负战胜了他：他从未在这样短暂的谈话中感到如此筋疲力竭，他觉得心脏在隐隐作痛，每跳一下，便在动脉中产生一声金属般的回响。他感到自己衰老、凄凉、无用，有一种想哭出来的急切渴望，以至于再也说不出什么话来。在被各种预感犁出一道道沟壑的沉默之中，他们喝完了第二杯茶。她再开口时，不过是为了让女仆把收着信件的夹子取来。他差点就想请求她将信留下，因为他已用复写纸存下了副本，但又想到这种谨慎反而会让人觉得不够高尚。于是，已经无话可说。告辞前，他请她允许自己在下一个星期二的同一时间再来。她暗自思忖是否应该如此迁就他。
And so he returned on Tuesday at five o’clock, and then every Tuesday after that, and he ignored the convention of notifying her, because by the end of the second month the weekly visits had been incorporated into both their routines. Florentino Ariza brought English biscuits for tea, candied chestnuts, Greek olives, little salon delicacies that he would find on the ocean liners. One Tuesday he brought her a copy of the picture of her and Hildebranda taken by the Belgian photographer more than half a century before, which he had bought for fifteen centavos at a postcard sale in the Arcade of the Scribes. Fermina Daza could not understand how it had come to be there, and he could only understand it as a miracle of love. One morning, as he was cutting roses in his garden, Florentino Ariza could not resist the temptation of taking one to her on his next visit. It was a difficult problem in the language of flowers because she was a recent widow. A red rose, symbol of flaming passion, might offend her mourning. Yellow roses, which in another language were the flowers of good fortune, were an expression of jealousy in the common vocabulary. He had heard of the black roses of Turkey, which were perhaps the most appropriate, but he had not been able to obtain any for acclimatization in his patio. After much thought he risked a white rose, which he liked less than the others because it was insipid and mute: it did not say anything. At the last minute, in case Fermina Daza was suspicious enough to attribute some meaning to it, he removed the thorns.
于是，星期二下午五点他又来了。并且，以后的每个星期二都例行如此，从不按惯例事先通知，因为到了第二个月的月末，每星期的见面已纳入了两人的日常习惯。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨总是会带来喝茶时吃的英国饼干、糖渍栗子、希腊橄榄，以及远洋轮船上各种聚会时吃的精致美味。有一个星期二，他给她带来了她和伊尔德布兰达的照片，就是半个多世纪前比利时摄影师拍的那张，他在“代笔人门廊”的一次明信片拍卖中花了十五生太伏买下来。费尔明娜·达萨搞不明白照片怎么会到了那里，他也不明白，但他把这看作爱情的奇迹。一天早上，在花园中修剪玫瑰时，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨禁不住诱惑，想在下次拜访时为费尔明娜·达萨带去一枝。但给新寡的女人送花，花语成了难题。红玫瑰象征着火一般的激情，对守丧的她来说可能是一种冒犯。而黄玫瑰呢，有时象征着好运，但更普遍的时候表达的是忌妒。他曾听人说起土耳其黑玫瑰，或许那是最合适的，但他一直没能让它们适应自己院子里的气候。想来想去，他决定冒险带一枝白玫瑰，他从不像喜欢其他玫瑰那样喜欢它，就因为它平淡无奇，无声无息：什么也不能表达。在最后时刻，为避免精明的费尔明娜·达萨赋予它什么含义，他剪掉了玫瑰上的刺。
“I hadn’t thought they made any sense,” he said.
“我没想过见面要有什么意义。”他说。
“I don’t see what sense so many visits would make,” she said.
“我看不出，见这么多次面有什么意义。”
That is how it always was: he would attempt to move forward, and she would block the way. But on this occasion, despite her ready answer, Florentino Ariza realized that he had hit the mark, because she had to turn her face so that he would not see her blush. A burning, childish blush, with a life of its own and an insolence that turned her vexation on herself. Florentino Ariza was very careful to move to other, less offensive topics, but his courtesy was so obvious that she knew she had been found out, and that increased her anger. It was an evil Tuesday. She was on the point of asking him not to return, but the idea of a lovers” quarrel seemed so ridiculous at their age and in their circumstances that it provoked a fit of laughter. The following Tuesday, when Florentino Ariza was placing the rose in the vase, she examined her conscience and discovered to her joy that not a vestige of resentment was left over from the previous week.
总是如此：他试图前进，而她却堵住他的去路。不过这一次，虽然她回答得恰到好处，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨却发现自己已经击中了目标，因为她不得不转过脸去，为的是不让他看到她脸上的红晕。那一片燃烧着的、青春萌动的红晕，仿佛拥有自己的生命似的，搅起费尔明娜·达萨心中的不悦：她为这种失态而怨恨起自己来。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨小心翼翼地把谈话转向不那么敏感的话题，但他的彬彬有礼是如此明显，她知道自己已被识破，而这更增加了她的愤怒。两人度过了一个糟糕的星期二。她差点就让他不要再来，但想到两人竟在如此年纪和如此境况，像恋人一般吵架，她又觉得荒唐不已，险些笑出声来。接下来的那个星期二，当弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨把玫瑰花插到花瓶里时，她检视了一下自己的内心，高兴地发现上星期的不悦没有留下哪怕最微小的一丝痕迹。
“That is true,” she said, “but the intention was different, and you know it.”
“的确，”她说，“但用意不一样，这您是知道的。”
It was well received as a gift with no hidden intentions, and the Tuesday ritual was enriched, so that when he would arrive with the white rose, the vase filled with water was ready in the center of the tea table. One Tuesday, as he placed the rose in the vase, he said in an apparently casual manner:
作为一件没有任何隐藏含义的礼物，玫瑰被欣然接受了。就这样，星期二的例行仪式得以丰富，以至于每当他手持白玫瑰到来时，茶几上都已准备好了盛着水的花瓶。一个星期二，把玫瑰插在花瓶中时，他看似随意地说：
“In our day it was camellias, not roses.”
“在我们那个时代，送的可不是玫瑰，而是山茶花。”
His visits soon began to acquire an awkward familial amplitude, for Dr. Urbino Daza and his wife would sometimes appear as if by accident, and they would stay to play cards. Florentino Ariza did not know how to play, but Fermina taught him in just one visit and they both sent a written challenge to the Urbino Dazas for the following Tuesday. The games were so pleasant for everyone that they soon became as official as his visits, and patterns were established for each person’s contribution. Dr. Urbino and his wife, who was an excellent confectioner, brought exquisite pastries, a different one each time. Florentino Ariza continued to bring delicacies from the European ships, and Fermina Daza found a way to contribute a new surprise each time. They played on the third Tuesday of every month, and although they did not wager with money, the loser was obliged to contribute something special to the next game.
这种拜访很快便尴尬地扩展到家庭范围，因为乌尔比诺·达萨医生和他的妻子常常意外地出现，而且还会留下来玩纸牌。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨本来不会玩牌，费尔明娜·达萨在某次见面时教会了他，于是两人给乌尔比诺·达萨夫妇发出了下星期二一决高下的书面挑战。那几局牌大家都玩得很愉快，很快，牌局便像拜访一样被正式确定下来，并规定好每人需为此做出的贡献。乌尔比诺·达萨医生一家贡献出每次都不一样的别出心裁的蛋糕，因为他的妻子可以称得上是一位杰出的糕点师。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨继续带来在欧洲船上找到的新奇玩意儿。费尔明娜·达萨则每星期都绞尽脑汁搞出些令人惊喜的花样。纸牌比赛在每个月的第三个星期二举行，赌注并不是钱，而是输者必须在下一次的牌局中做出点特别的贡献。
There was no difference between Dr. Urbino Daza and his public image: his talents were limited, his manner awkward, and he suffered from sudden twitching, caused by either happiness or annoyance, and from inopportune blushing, which made one fear for his mental fortitude. But it was evident on first meeting him that he was, beyond the shadow of a doubt, what Florentino Ariza most feared people would call him: a good man. His wife, on the other hand, was vivacious and had a plebeian spark of sharp wit that gave a more human note to her elegance. One could not wish for a better couple to play cards with, and Florentino Ariza’s insatiable need for love overflowed with the illusion of feeling that he was part of a family.
乌尔比诺·达萨医生本人与他的公众形象并无差别：头脑贫乏，行事笨拙，不论喜怒都爱一惊一乍，动不动就脸红更是让人担心他的心理承受能力。但毫无疑问，一眼就能看出他是个好人，而弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨最怕别人这样评价自己。医生的妻子却正好相反。她活跃，有一股小老百姓的机灵劲儿，一切都能做得合乎时宜且恰到好处，这使她在优雅之外更添了一点儿人情味。没有比他们更完美的牌局对手了。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨对爱的贪婪需求由此得到了满足，他幻想自己是和家人在一起共享天伦。
“Those of us who make the rules have the greatest obligation to abide by them,” he had said to him.
“我们这些制定规则的人，更有责任身体力行。”他对他说。
One night, as they were leaving the house together, Dr. Urbino Daza asked him to have lunch with him: “Tomorrow, at twelve-thirty, at the Social Club.” It was an exquisite dish served with a poisonous wine: the Social Club reserved the right to refuse admission for any number of reasons, and one of the most important was illegitimate birth. Uncle Leo XII had experienced great annoyance in this regard, and Florentino Ariza himself had suffered the humiliation of being asked to leave when he was already sitting at the table as the guest of one of the founding members, for whom Florentino Ariza had performed complex favors in the area of river commerce, and who had no other choice but to take him elsewhere to eat.
一天晚上，他们一同走出家门时，乌尔比诺·达萨医生邀请他共进午餐：“明天，中午十二点半，在社交俱乐部。”这就像是给一顿美味佳肴配上有毒的葡萄酒：出于种种考虑，社交俱乐部保留拒绝客人进入的权利，其中最重要的规则之一就是拒绝私生子入内。叔叔莱昂十二就有过这类令人恼火的经历，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨自己也曾在已就座的情况下受此侮辱。当时，邀请他的是俱乐部的一位合伙创始人，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨曾在河运生意中帮过他很大的忙。最后，这位合伙人不得不带他到别的地方去吃饭。
Nevertheless Florentino Ariza took the risk with Dr. Urbino Daza, and he was welcomed with special deference, although he was not asked to sign the gold book for notable guests. The lunch was brief, there were just the two of them, and its tone was subdued. The fears regarding the meeting that had troubled Florentino Ariza since the previous afternoon vanished with the port he had as an aperitif. Dr. Urbino Daza wanted to talk to him about his mother. Because of everything that he said, Florentino Ariza realized that she had spoken to her son about him. And something still more surprising: she had lied on his behalf. She told him that they had been childhood friends, playmates from the time of her arrival from San Juan de la Ciénaga, and that he had introduced her to reading, for which she was forever grateful. She also told him that after school she had often spent long hours in the notions shop with Tránsito Ariza, performing prodigious feats of embroidery, for she had been a notable teacher, and that if she had not continued seeing Florentino Ariza with the same frequency, it had not been through choice but because of how their lives had diverged.
尽管如此，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨还是跟着乌尔比诺·达萨医生冒了一次风险。结果，虽然没有人邀请他在金色的贵宾签名簿上签名，他却受到了特殊的礼遇。午餐很简短，只有他们两人，在低沉的小调气氛中进行。第一杯波尔多开胃酒下肚，从前一天下午起便一直烦扰着弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的愁云一下子消散了。乌尔比诺·达萨医生想和他谈一谈自己的母亲。他滔滔不绝地讲了很多，从他的话里，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨发现她跟儿子说起过他，而更让他吃惊的是，她竟然为他撒了谎。她告诉儿子，他们从小就是朋友，自从她从圣胡安·德拉希耶纳加来到此地，他们就一起玩耍，是他教会她识字读书，因此，她对他一直怀有深深的感激之情。她还告诉儿子，每当她放学回家，都会先去特兰西多·阿里萨的杂货铺里和她一起做好几个小时的精美刺绣，因为她是一位出色的老师。后来，她没有再和弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨经常见面，并非出于她的意愿，而是因为他们各自有了不同的生活。
Before he came to the heart of his intentions, Dr. Urbino Daza made several digressions on the subject of aging. He thought that the world would make more rapid progress without the burden of old people. He said: “Humanity, like armies in the field, advances at the speed of the slowest.” He foresaw a more humanitarian and by the same token a more civilized future in which men and women would be isolated in marginal cities when they could no longer take care of themselves so that they might be spared the humiliation, suffering, and frightful loneliness of old age. From the medical point of view, according to him, the proper age limit would be seventy. But until they reached that degree of charity, the only solution was nursing homes, where the old could console each other and share their likes and dislikes, their habits and sorrows, safe from their natural disagreements with the younger generation. He said: “Old people, with other old people, are not so old.” Well, then: Dr. Urbino Daza wanted to thank Florentino Ariza for the good companionship he gave his mother in the solitude of her widowhood, he begged him to continue doing so for the good of them both and the convenience of all, and to have patience with her senile whims. Florentino Ariza was relieved with the outcome of their interview. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I am now four years older than she is, and have been since long, long before you were born.” Then he succumbed to the temptation of giving vent to his feelings with an ironic barb.
在没有深入谈到自己的意图之前，乌尔比诺·达萨医生先信口开河地谈论了一番对老年的看法。他认为，如果没有老人阻碍，世界会发展得更快。他说：“人类，就如同远征的军队一样，是以队伍中步伐最慢者的速度前进的。”他预见将会有一个更人道，从而也更文明的未来，那时，人到了不能自我料理的年龄，都将被隔离到边远城市，以避免老年的耻辱、痛苦和可怕的孤独。从医生的角度来看，他认为界限应该是六十岁。但在社会达到那样一个仁慈的高度之前，唯一的解决办法就是养老院。在那里，老人们可以互相安慰，分享自己的好恶、怪癖和痛苦，并逃开与下几代人不可避免的分歧。他说：“老人在老人们中间，就显得没那么老了。”因而，他很想感谢弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨在他母亲孤独的寡妇生活中，很好地陪伴了她，并恳求他为了他们两人好，也为了让所有人都舒心，继续这样做下去，另外，他还请他对母亲上了年纪后的坏脾气抱有耐心。这次会面的结果令弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨感到如释重负。“请您放心，”他说，“我比她大四岁，而且不只现在如此，从很久以前，在您出生很久以前就是如此了。”接着，他忍不住用隐晦的讥讽一吐为快。
Until that moment Dr. Urbino Daza had not noticed the inappropriateness of his prognostications, and he became enmeshed in a long series of explanations that only made matters worse. But Florentino Ariza helped him to extricate himself. He was radiant, for he knew that sooner or later he was going to have another meeting like this one with Dr. Urbino Daza in order to satisfy an unavoidable social convention: the formal request for his mother’s hand in marriage. The lunch had been very encouraging, not only in and of itself but because it showed him how simple and well received that inexorable request was going to be. If he could have counted on Fermina Daza’s consent, no occasion would have been more propitious. Moreover, after their conversation at this historic lunch, the formality of a request was almost de trop.
直到这时，乌尔比诺·达萨医生才意识到自己的预言是不恰当的。他匆忙钻进解释的峡道，结果又把自己绕了进去。但弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨帮他走了出来。他容光焕发，因为他清楚自己迟早要和乌尔比诺·达萨医生有这样一次会面，以便履行一项不可避免的社会手续：向他的母亲正式求婚。这顿午餐很是振奋人心，不仅由于它的初衷，更是因为它向他表明，他那势在必行的求婚将会被愉快而顺畅地接受。事实上，要是他现在已经征得了费尔明娜·达萨的同意，那么没有比此刻更合适的机会了。甚至可以说，在这次历史性的午餐谈话之后，形式上的求得允许已显得多余了。
“In the society of the future,” he concluded, “you would have to visit the cemetery now to bring her and me a bouquet of arum lilies for lunch.”
“在未来的社会里，”他总结道，“您这会儿就得去墓地为我和您母亲的午餐送上一束火鹤了。”
Even in his youth Florentino Ariza climbed up and down stairs with special care, for he had always believed that old age began with one’s first minor fall and that death came with the second. The staircase in his offices seemed the most dangerous of all to him because it was so steep and narrow, and long before he had to make a special effort not to drag his feet, he would climb it with his eyes fixed on each step and both hands clutching the banister. It had often been suggested that he replace it with one that was less dangerous, but he always put off the decision until next month because he thought it was a concession to old age. As the years passed, it took him longer and longer to walk up the stairs, not because it was harder for him, as he himself hurried to explain, but because he used greater and greater care in the climb. Nevertheless, on the afternoon when he returned from lunch with Dr. Urbino Daza, after the aperitif of port and half a glass of red wine with the meal, and above all after their triumphal conversation, he tried to reach the third stair with so youthful a dance step that he twisted his left ankle, fell backward, and only by a miracle did not kill himself. As he was falling he had enough lucidity to think that he was not going to die of this accident because the logic of life would not allow two men, who had loved the same woman so much for so many years, to die in the same way within a year of each other. He was right. He was put into a plaster cast from his foot to his calf and forced to remain immobile in bed, but he was livelier than he had been before his fall. When the doctor ordered sixty days of convalescence, he could not believe his misfortune.
还年轻时，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨上下楼梯就特别小心，因为他知道老年常常是在一次无关紧要的摔倒之后开始的，而死神则跟随着第二次跌倒到来。在所有楼梯里，他觉得办公室的楼梯最危险，因为它又陡又窄。而且，早在他还不太费力就能不拖着双脚上楼之前很久，他便在每次上楼时双眼紧盯台阶，双手紧扶栏杆。大家曾多次建议他换一个不那么危险的楼梯，但他总是推说下个月再做决定，因为在他看来，这是向衰老让步的表现。随着岁月的流逝，他上楼需要的时间越来越长，但并非像他匆忙解释的那样，是因为越来越吃力，而是因为越来越小心。然而，在跟乌尔比诺·达萨医生共进午餐后回来的那天下午，由于喝了一杯波尔多开胃酒和半杯佐餐红葡萄酒，尤其是又进行了那么鼓舞人心的对话，他试图以年轻人的舞步一下跃上第三级台阶，结果扭伤了左脚脚踝，仰面朝天地跌下来，没有摔死已属奇迹。在摔倒的那一瞬，他头脑十分清醒地想，他不会跌一跤就死掉，因为在生活的逻辑中，两个在这么多年以来一直深爱着同一个女人的男人，不可能前后只隔一年就以同样的方式死掉。他是对的。他从脚一直到小腿都被打上了石膏，并被迫卧床静养，但人却比摔倒之前还要精神。当医生命令他六十天不许走动时，他无法相信自己竟会如此不幸。
The first Monday was his worst day. The pain had eased and the medical prognosis was very encouraging, but he refused to accept the fatality of not seeing Fermina Daza the following afternoon for the first time in four months. Nevertheless, after a resigned siesta, he submitted to reality and wrote her a note excusing himself. He wrote it by hand on perfumed paper and in luminous ink so that it could be read in the dark, and with no sense of shame he dramatized the gravity of his accident in an effort to arouse her compassion. She answered him two days later, very sympathetic, very kind, without one word extra, just as in the great days of their love. He seized the opportunity as it flew by and wrote to her again. When she answered a second time, he decided to go much further than in their coded Tuesday conversations, and he had a telephone installed next to his bed on the pretext of keeping an eye on the company’s daily affairs. He asked the operator to connect him with the three-digit number that he had known by heart since the first time he dialed it. The quiet voice strained by the mystery of distance, the beloved voice answered, recognized the other voice, and said goodbye after three conventional phrases of greeting. Florentino Ariza was devastated by her indifference: they were back at the beginning.
最糟糕的一天是跌倒后的第一个星期一。疼痛已经减弱，医生所下的诊断也令人鼓舞，但他拒绝接受第二天下午不能去看望费尔明娜·达萨的命运，这是四个月以来他第一次无法赴约。然而，无可奈何地睡过午觉之后，他向现实屈服了，给她写了一封表达歉意的信。信是手写的，写在一张散发着香味的纸上，用的是在黑暗中也能阅读的发光墨水。他毫不害羞地戏剧性夸大了这个不幸事件的严重性，企图引起她的同情。两天后，她给他回了信，很有感情，也很和善，但一字不多一字不少，中规中矩，就像当初热恋的日子里她写的那些信一样。他立即抓住机会，又给她写了一封信。她第二次回信后，他决定要前进一大步，超越每星期二那打哑谜似的交谈，同时，他以监督公司每日工作进度为借口，在床前装了电话。他请总机接线员接通了那个他从第一次拨过后就牢记于心的三位数号码。那个由于神秘的距离而有些紧张的低沉音色、那个他倾心爱慕的声音接了电话，并听出了打电话的人是谁，但只客套地问候了两三句就和他道别了。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨因她的冷漠伤心欲绝：他们又回到了最初的阶段。
“Don’t do this to me, Doctor,” he begged. “Two months for me are like ten years for you.”
“请别这样对我，医生。”他哀求道，“我的两个月就如同您的十年啊。”
He tried to get up several times, holding his leg that was like a statue’s, with both hands, and reality always defeated him. But when at last he walked again, his ankle still painful and his back raw, he had more than enough reasons to believe that destiny had rewarded his perseverance with a providential fall.
他好几次试图用双手抬着那条雕塑般的腿站起来，但每一次，现实都打败了他。当他终于拖着那只仍旧疼痛的脚踝、挺着裸露鲜肉的脊背重新开始行走时，他有充分的理由相信，命运用一次天意的跌倒嘉奖了他的坚贞。
Two days later, however, he received a letter from Fermina Daza in which she begged him not to call again. Her reasons were valid. There were so few telephones in the city that all communication took place through an operator who knew all the subscribers, their lives, their miracles, and it did not matter if they were not at home: she would find them wherever they might be. In return for such efficiency she kept herself informed of their conversations, she uncovered the secrets, the best-kept dramas of their private lives, and it was not unusual for her to interrupt a conversation in order to express her point of view or to calm tempers. Then, too, that year marked the founding of Justice, an evening newspaper whose sole purpose was to attack the families with long last names, inherited and unencumbered names, which was the publisher’s revenge because his sons had not been admitted to the Social Club. Despite her unimpeachable life, Fermina Daza was more careful now than ever of everything she said or did, even with her closest friends. So that she maintained her connection to Florentino Ariza by means of the anachronistic thread of letters. The correspondence back and forth became so frequent and intense that he forgot about his leg and the chastisement of the bed, he forgot about everything, and he dedicated himself totally to writing on the kind of portable table used in hospitals to serve meals to patients.
然而两天后，他收到一封费尔明娜·达萨的信。她在信中恳求他不要再给自己打电话。她的理由非常充分：城中的电话屈指可数，而且是通过同一位接线员转接，她认识所有用户，了解他们的生活和奇闻逸事，而且不管用户是否在家，她能在任何地方找到他们。她那高效工作的回报，便是她知晓用户之间的全部对话，能窥见他们私人生活中的大小秘密，发现他们那些隐藏得最好的动人故事。有时，她甚至会介入他们的谈话，发表自己的观点，或平息他们的情绪，这都不足为奇。另一方面，那一年城中创办了一份晚报，叫《正义报》，唯一的宗旨就是抨击拥有长长姓氏的家族，指名道姓，毫无顾忌。那是报纸主人的报复，因为他的子女未被获准进入社交俱乐部。费尔明娜·达萨向来洁身自好，尤其是此时，她比任何时候都更留意自己的一言一行，即使是对最亲密的朋友。因此，她仍然采用通信这种不合潮流的方式与弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨保持联系。最终，他们来往的信件如此频繁而密切，以至于他忘记了自己的脚伤，忘记了卧床的惩罚，忘记了一切，全身心地投入到写信之中，整日伏在一张医院里供病人吃饭用的轻便小桌上。
They called each other tú again, again they exchanged commentaries on their lives as they had done once before in their letters, and again Florentino Ariza tried to move too quickly: he wrote her name with the point of a pin on the petals of a camellia and sent it to her in a letter. Two days later it was returned with no message. Fermina Daza could not help it: all that seemed like children’s games to her, most of all when Florentino Ariza insisted on evoking the afternoons of melancholy verses in the Park of the Evangels, the letters hidden along her route to school, the embroidery lessons under the almond trees. With sorrowing heart she reprimanded him in what appeared to be a casual question in the midst of other trivial remarks: “Why do you insist on talking about what does not exist?” Later she reproached him for his fruitless insistence on not permitting himself to grow old in a natural way. This was, according to her, the reason for his haste and constant blundering as he evoked the past. She could not understand how a man capable of the thoughts that had given her the strength to endure her widowhood could become entangled in so childish a manner when he attempted to apply them to his own life. Their roles were reversed. Now it was she who tried to give him new courage to face the future, with a phrase that he, in his reckless haste, could not decipher: Let time pass and we will see what it brings. For he was never as good a student as she was. His forced immobility, the growing lucidity of his conviction that time was fleeting, his mad desire to see her, everything proved to him that his fear of falling had been more accurate and more tragic than he had foreseen. For the first time, he began to think in a reasoned way about the reality of death.
他们又开始以“你”相称了，又像昔日的信中那样交换起对生活的看法来。但弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨又一次操之过急：他把她的名字用大头针的针尖刻在一朵山茶花的花瓣上，夹在一封信中寄给了她。两天以后，他收到她退回的花，没有任何评论。费尔明娜·达萨无法不这么做，因为她认为这些都是小孩子的把戏。尤其是当弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨坚持回忆他在福音花园中阅读伤感诗句的那一个个下午、她上学路上的那一个个藏信地点，以及杏树下那一堂堂刺绣课的时候，她更是如此以为。她怀着内心的痛苦，试图让他回到他应在的位置，用一个夹杂在平常评论中的看似偶然的问题点醒他：“你为什么偏偏要说一些根本不存在的事呢？”后来，她又责怪他那永不会有结果的固执，责怪他不肯顺从自然让自己老去。在她看来，这就是他常常堕入并迷失在回忆之中的原因。她不明白，一个善于思考并以其思考让她获益良多，帮她减轻了寡妇生活的种种苦楚的男人，为何在思考自己的人生时，却用那样一种幼稚的方式陷入到一团乱麻之中。于是，两人的角色颠倒过来。此时，反而是她尽力给予他展望未来的新的勇气，在信中写道：让时间流逝吧，我们会看到它究竟带来了什么。他在一时的茫然间不知该如何限免这句话，要知道，他从来不是一个像她那样的好学生。被迫卧床不动、一天比一天更清楚地意识到时光飞逝，同时又要忍受想见她的疯狂渴望，这一切都在向他证明，他对跌倒的恐惧比他所预见的更加合情合理，也更具有悲剧性。他第一次开始用一种理智的方式思考死亡的现实。
Leona Cassiani helped him to bathe and to change his pajamas every other day, she gave him his enemas, she held the portable urinal for him, she applied arnica compresses to the bedsores on his back, she gave him the massages recommended by the doctor so that his immobility would not cause other, more severe ailments. On Saturdays and Sundays she was relieved by América Vicuña, who was to receive her teaching degree in December of that year. He had promised to send her to Alabama for further study, at the expense of the river company, in part to quiet his conscience and above all in order not to face either the reproaches that she did not know how to make to him or the explanations that he owed to her. He never imagined how much she suffered during her sleepless nights at school, during the weekends without him, during her life without him, because he never imagined how much she loved him. He had been informed in an official letter from the school that she had fallen from her perpetual first place in the class to last, and that she had almost failed her final examinations. But he ignored his duty as guardian: he said nothing to América Vicuña’s parents, restrained by a sense of guilt that he tried to elude, and he did not discuss it with her because of a well-founded fear that she would try to implicate him in her failure. And so he left things as they were. Without realizing it, he was beginning to defer his problems in the hope that death would resolve them.
莱昂娜·卡西亚尼每两天来帮他洗一次澡，更换睡衣。她为他灌肠，为他放好尿壶，为他在脊背的溃烂处敷上山金车花药膏，还遵照医生的嘱咐给他按摩，以免缺少活动让他患上其他更严重的疾病。星期六和星期日，阿美利加·维库尼亚来替换她。这年的十二月，她就能获得教师学位了。他答应她，由河运公司出钱，送她到阿拉巴马州的高等学府去。这样做，部分是为了让自己的良心得到安慰，但更多的是为了逃避她尚没有找到方式提出的指责以及他欠她的一个解释。他永远也想象不到她在寄宿学校里度过了多少个不眠之夜，在没有他的周末、没有他的生活中过得多么痛苦，因为他永远也想象不到她有多么爱他。从学校寄来的官方信件中，他得知她由原来一贯的第一名跌至最后一名，在期末考试中还险些没有及格。然而，他逃避了监护人的责任：他试图逃避自己的负罪感，因而没有向阿美利加·维库尼亚的父母报告任何情况，也没有跟她本人谈过此事，因为他有足够的理由害怕，她会把他和自己学业上的失败牵连在一起。于是，他对一切听之任之。他没有意识到，他已经在开始拖延自己的种种问题，期盼死亡能解决一切。
The two women who took care of him, and Florentino Ariza himself, were surprised at how much he had changed. Less than ten years before, he had assaulted one of the maids behind the main staircase in the house, dressed and standing as she was, and in less time than a Filipino rooster he had left her in a family way. He had to give her a furnished house in exchange for her swearing that the author of her dishonor was a part-time, Sunday sweetheart who had never even kissed her, and her father and uncles, who were proficient sugarcane cutters, forced them to marry. It did not seem possible that this could be the same man, this man handled front and back by two women who just a few months earlier had made him tremble with love and who now soaped him above his waist and below, dried him with towels of Egyptian cotton, and massaged his entire body, while he did not emit a single sigh of passion. Each of them had a different explanation for his lack of desire. Leona Cassiani thought it was the prelude to death. América Vicuña attributed it to a hidden cause whose intricacies she could not decipher. He alone knew the truth, and it had its own name. In any case, it was unfair: they suffered more in serving him than he did in being so well served.
不仅这两个照顾他的女人，就连弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨本人也对自己的变化之大感到吃惊。不到十年前，他还在家中的主楼梯后面突袭了一个女仆。她当时穿着衣服站在那儿，而他竟以比菲律宾斗鸡还短暂的时间迅速让她受了孕。他不得不赠给她一幢带家具的房子，才让她发誓说使她失去贞洁的罪魁祸首，是那个每逢星期日才见上一面、连吻都没吻过她、顶多算半个情人的男人。她的父亲和叔叔都是砍甘蔗的好手，强迫那小伙子跟她结了婚。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨简直和过去判若两人。两个在几个月前还令他爱得颤抖的女人，如今在他身上摸来摸去，把他翻过来又掉过去，给他全身上下涂满肥皂，又用埃及棉毛巾为他擦干身体，给他做全身按摩，可他却连一声神魂颠倒的叹息也没有发出。对于他没有了欲望这事，两个女人各有各的解释。莱昂娜·卡西亚尼认为这是死亡的前奏。阿美利加·维库尼亚则把它归为一个隐秘的缘由，但这其中的来龙去脉她尚未琢磨清楚。事实上，只有他知道真相，而这真相只有一个名字。无论如何，这是不公平的：她们照顾着他，他享受着无微不至的照顾，可她们却遭受着比他更大的痛苦。
Fermina Daza needed no more than three Tuesdays to realize how much she missed Florentino Ariza’s visits. She enjoyed the friends who were frequent visitors, and she enjoyed them even more as time distanced her from her husband’s habits. Lucrecia del Real del Obispo had gone to Panama to have her ear examined because of a pain that nothing could ease, and after a month she came back feeling much better, but hearing less than she had before and using an ear trumpet. Fermina Daza was the friend who was most tolerant of her confusions of questions and answers, and this was so encouraging to Lucrecia that hardly a day went by that she did not stop in at any hour. But for Fermina Daza no one could take the place of her calming afternoons with Florentino Ariza.
仅仅三个星期二，就足以让费尔明娜·达萨察觉到自己有多想念弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的拜访。她和一直来往的女伴们相处得不错，特别是随着时间的推移，她离死去丈夫的习惯越来越远，而她们也相处得越来越愉快。卢克雷西娅·德尔雷亚尔·德尔奥比斯波去了一趟巴拿马，为的是治疗用什么办法都无法缓解的耳痛。一个月后她回来了，疼痛大为减轻，但别在耳上的助听器反而使她听到的东西比以前更少了。费尔明娜·达萨是她的朋友中最能忍受她答非所问的一个，这让她很受鼓舞，几乎每一天都随时可能出现在她家里。但费尔明娜·达萨无法用任何人来取代她和弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨度过的那一个个平静的下午。
The memory of the past did not redeem the future, as he insisted on believing. On the contrary, it strengthened the conviction that Fermina Daza had always had, that the feverish excitement of twenty had been something very noble, very beautiful, but it had not been love. Despite her rough honesty she did not intend to disclose that to him, either by mail or in person, nor did she have it in her heart to tell him how false the sentimentalities of his letters sounded after the miraculous consolation of his written meditations, how his lyrical lies cheapened him, how detrimental his maniacal insistence on recapturing the past was to his cause. No: not one line of his letters of long ago, not a single moment of her own despised youth, had made her feel that Tuesday afternoons without him could be as tedious, as lonely, and as repetitious as they really were.
并不像他坚持相信的那样，回忆并不能拯救未来。恰恰相反，对过去的记忆更加坚定了费尔明娜·达萨的信念，那就是二十岁时的火热躁动是某种高贵而美丽的东西，但绝不是爱情。尽管她率真到有些刻薄的地步，却也不愿亲自向他揭示这一点，无论是写信还是当面。她也没有勇气告诉他，在认识到他笔下的那些思考多么具有抚慰心灵的奇迹作用之后，他信中那些伤感主义的言语听上去有多么虚伪，那些抒情诗似的谎言又会多么贬损他的价值，那样发了疯似的坚持要回到过去更会多么损毁他的事业。不，他往昔的信中没有一行字，她自己那百无聊赖的青春中也没有片刻像此时这样，让她感受到没有他的星期二下午竟会如此漫长、如此孤独、如此不堪忍受，可事实的确就是这样。
In one of her attacks of simplification, she had relegated to the stables the radioconsole that her husband had given her as an anniversary gift, and which both of them had intended to present to the Museum as the first in the city. In the gloom of her mourning she had resolved not to use it again, for a widow bearing her family names could not listen to any kind of music without offending the memory of the dead, even if she did so in private. But after her third solitary Tuesday she had it brought back to the drawing room, not to enjoy the sentimental song on the Riobamba station, as she had done before, but to fill her idle hours with the soap operas from Santiago de Cuba. It was a good idea, for after the birth of her daughter she had begun to lose the habit of reading that her husband had inculcated with so much diligence ever since their honeymoon, and with the progressive fatigue of her eyes she had stopped altogether, so that months would go by without her knowing where she had left her reading glasses.
有一次，她曾在单纯的冲动之下，把丈夫在某个结婚纪念日送给她的立式收音机发配到马厩里去。她也想过要把它捐赠给博物馆，因为这毕竟是本城的第一台收音机。在服丧的灰暗日子里，她决定不再使用它，因为像她这样姓氏高贵的寡妇，听任何一种音乐都有辱对死者的哀思，即便在私下里也不行。可是，在度过了第三个孤独的星期二以后，她命人把收音机搬回了客厅。她这样做并不是为了像以前那样欣赏里奥班巴电台的伤感歌曲，而是想用古巴圣地亚哥电台催人泪下的小说连播打发一潭死水的时间。这样做是明智的，因为自从女儿出生后，她便开始丢掉丈夫从新婚旅行起就努力在她身上培养的阅读习惯。随着视力的逐渐衰退，她最终完全放弃了这个习惯，以至于好几个月里都不知道眼镜放到哪儿去了。
She took such a liking to the soap operas from Santiago de Cuba that she waited with impatience for each day’s new episode. From time to time she listened to the news to find out what was going on in the world, and on the few occasions when she was alone in the house she would turn the volume very low and listen to distant, clear merengues from Santo Domingo and plenas from Puerto Rico. One night, on an unknown station that suddenly came in as strong and clear as if it were next door, she heard heartbreaking news: an elderly couple, who for forty years had been repeating their honeymoon every year in the same spot, had been murdered, bludgeoned to death with oars by the skipper of the boat they were riding in, who then robbed them of all the money they were carrying: fourteen dollars. The effect on her was even more devastating when Lucrecia del Real told her the complete story, which had been published in a local newspaper. The police had discovered that the elderly couple beaten to death were clandestine lovers who had taken their vacations together for forty years, but who each had a stable and happy marriage as well as very large families. Fermina Daza, who never cried over the soap operas on the radio, had to hold back the knot of tears that choked her. In his next letter, without any comment, Florentino Ariza sent her the news item that he had cut out of the paper.
她迷恋上了古巴圣地亚哥电台的小说广播，每天都焦急地等待收听新的章节。她偶尔也听听新闻，以便了解世界上发生的事。极少数单独在家的时候，她也会把声音调到最低，遥远而清晰地听一听圣多明哥的美瑞格舞曲和波多黎各的普莱纳舞曲。一天晚上，她突然收到一个陌生电台，声音洪亮清晰，就像从邻居家里传来的。通过这个电台，她听到一则令人心碎的消息：一对来到四十年前的故地重温蜜月旅行的老人，竟被载他们出游的船夫用桨打死了，为的是抢走他们身上带的钱：十四美元。当卢克雷西娅·德尔雷亚尔把刊登在本地一份报纸上的整件事情的始末讲给她听时，她的感触更深了。警察发现两个老人是被活活打死的，女的七十八岁，男的八十四岁。他们是一对秘密情人，四十年来一直一起度假，但各自都有幸福而稳定的婚姻，而且子孙满堂。听小说连播时从未落过泪的费尔明娜·达萨，此刻却不得不强忍住哽在喉头的泪水。在接下来的一封信中，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨将这则消息的剪报寄给了她，但没有做出任何评论。
These were not the last tears that Fermina Daza was going to hold back. Florentino Ariza had not yet finished his sixty days of seclusion when Justice published a front-page story, complete with photographs of the two protagonists, about the alleged secret love affair between Dr. Juvenal Urbino and Lucrecia del Real del Obispo. There was speculation on the details of their relationship, the frequency of their meetings and how they were arranged, and the complicity of her husband, who was given to excesses of sodomy with the blacks on his sugar plantation. The story, published in enormous block letters in an ink the color of blood, fell like a thundering cataclysm on the enfeebled local aristocracy. Not a line of it was true: Juvenal Urbino and Lucrecia del Real had been close friends in the days when they were both single, and they had continued their friendship after their marriages, but they had never been lovers. In any case, it did not seem that the purpose of the story was to sully the name of Dr. Juvenal Urbino, whose memory enjoyed universal respect, but to injure the husband of Lucrecia del Real, who had been elected President of the Social Club the week before. The scandalous story was suppressed in a few hours. But Lucrecia del Real did not visit Fermina Daza again, and Fermina Daza interpreted this as a confession of guilt.
这并不是费尔明娜·达萨最后一次必须强忍住的泪水。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨还没有完成六十天的幽禁，《正义报》就在头版以最大的篇幅披露了胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生和卢克雷西娅·德尔雷亚尔·德尔奥比斯波之间可能存在的私情，还刊登了两位当事人的照片。报纸推测了他们私通的种种细节、频繁程度和方式等等，还提到卢克雷西娅·德尔雷亚尔的丈夫对此欣然接受，因为他更热衷于鸡奸自己蔗糖厂中的黑人。用血红色的特大号印刷字体刊登出来的这篇报道，像一声灾难性的轰雷，震撼了本地早已四分五裂的贵族阶层。事实上，报道中没有一行字是真的：胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生和卢克雷西娅·德尔雷亚尔从单身时起就是亲密的朋友，结婚后依旧如此，但他们从不是情人。无论如何，这篇报道的目的似乎并不是为了玷污胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生的名誉，人们对他的回忆一致是充满敬意的，而是为了毁掉卢克雷西娅·德尔雷亚尔的丈夫，他在上周刚刚被选为社交俱乐部的主席。没过几个小时，丑闻就被平息了。但卢克雷西娅·德尔雷亚尔从此却再没去拜访过费尔明娜·达萨。费尔明娜·达萨把此举视作她默认了自己的过错。
It was soon obvious, however, that Fermina Daza was not immune to the hazards of her class. Justice attacked her one weak flank: her father’s business. When he was forced into exile, she knew of only one instance of his shady dealings, which had been told to her by Gala Placidia. Later, when Dr. Urbino confirmed the story after his interview with the Governor, she was convinced that her father had been the victim of slander. The facts were that two government agents had come to the house on the Park of the Evangels with a warrant, searched it from top to bottom without finding what they were looking for, and at last ordered the wardrobe with the mirrored doors in Fermina Daza’s old bedroom to be opened. Gala Placidia, who was alone in the house and lacked the means to stop anyone from doing anything, refused to open it, with the excuse that she did not have the keys. Then one of the agents broke the mirror on the door with the butt of his revolver and found the space between the glass and the wood stuffed with counterfeit hundred-dollar bills. This was the last in a chain of clues that led to Lorenzo Daza as the final link in a vast international operation. It was a masterful fraud, for the bills had the watermarks of the original paper: one-dollar bills had been erased by a chemical process that seemed to be magic, and reprinted as hundred-dollar notes. Lorenzo Daza claimed that the wardrobe had been purchased long after his daughter’s wedding, and that it must have come into the house with the bills already in it, but the police proved that it had been there since the days when Fermina Daza had been in school. He was the only one who could have hidden the counterfeit fortune behind the mirrors. This was all Dr. Urbino told his wife when he promised the Governor that he would send his father-in-law back to his own country in order to cover up the scandal. But the newspaper told much more.
然而，接下来的事很快就表明，费尔明娜·达萨也没能逃脱她这个阶层所要面临的危险。《正义报》残忍地攻击了她唯一脆弱的一面：她父亲的生意。当初父亲被迫远走他乡时，她只了解到他那龌龊生意中的一小段插曲，还是加拉·普拉西迪娅告诉她的。后来，乌尔比诺医生在和省长会面后向她证实了此事，但她仍然坚信，父亲是某桩卑鄙行径的牺牲品。事情是这样的：两名政府警探带着搜查令出现在福音花园的家中，从上到下搜了个遍，都没找到他们要找的东西。最后，他们命令打开费尔明娜·达萨原来那间卧室中那个门上带镜子的衣柜。当时，只有加拉·普拉西迪娅一个人在家，而她又无法通知任何人，于是就借口没有钥匙，拒绝打开衣柜。这时，其中一个警探用左轮手枪的枪柄打碎了柜门上的镜子，结果发现镜子与木板之间的空隙里塞满了一百美元的假钞。这是他们原先发现的一连串线索的终点，最终指向洛伦索·达萨，表明他是一桩巨大的国际交易的最后一环。假钞做得很高明，居然带有真钞的水印：他们通过魔法般的化学手段抹掉了一美元纸币的票面，再将其印成一百美元的面值。洛伦索·达萨辩解说，衣柜是女儿结婚后很久才买回来的，假钞应该是买来时就已经藏在里边了。可警察却证实衣柜从费尔明娜·达萨上学时起就已经在那里，除了他之外，任何人都不可能把假钞藏到镜子后面去。这就是乌尔比诺医生当时告诉妻子的所有情况，他向省长许诺，会把岳父送回老家，以遮盖丑闻。但这一次，报纸上讲的要多得多。
Justice also said that at the time that General Rafael Reyes founded the navy, Lorenzo Daza bought a shipment of surplus boots at a very low price from the English army, and with that one deal he doubled his fortune in six months. According to the newspaper, when the shipment reached this port, Lorenzo Daza refused to accept it because it contained only boots for the right foot, but he was the sole bidder when Customs auctioned it according to the law, and he bought it for the token sum of one hundred pesos. At the same time, under similar circumstances, an accomplice purchased the shipment of boots for the left foot that had reached Riohacha. Once they were in pairs, Lorenzo Daza took advantage of his relationship by marriage to the Urbino de la Calle family and sold the boots to the new navy at a profit of two thousand percent.
《正义报》还说，洛伦索·达萨曾以很低廉的价钱买下了英国军队一船多余的靴子，那时正值拉法埃尔·雷耶斯将军组建海军的时期，单凭这一笔买卖，他就在六个月里把自己的财富翻了一番。据报上说，这批货物到港时，洛伦索·达萨拒绝接收，因为运来的全都是右脚靴子。可当海关按照当时的法律将货物拍卖时，他却又是唯一的参加者，于是，他只以一百比索的象征性价格买下了货物。而几乎与此同时，他的一个同伙也在相同条件下买了一船进入里奥阿查港海关的左脚靴子。两批靴子配成对后，洛伦索·达萨利用自己与乌尔比诺·德拉卡列家族的亲戚关系，把它们以百分之两千的利润卖给了新建的海军。
It said that during one of the many civil wars of the last century, Lorenzo Daza had been the intermediary between the government of the Liberal President Aquileo Parra and one Joseph T. K. Korzeniowski, a native of Poland and a member of the crew of the merchant ship Saint Antoine, sailing under the French flag, who had spent several months here trying to conclude a complicated arms deal. Korzeniowski, who later became famous as Joseph Conrad, made contact somehow with Lorenzo Daza, who bought the shipment of arms from him on behalf of the government, with his credentials and his receipts in order and the purchase price in gold. According to the story in the newspaper, Lorenzo Daza claimed that the arms had been stolen in an improbable raid, and then he sold them again, for twice their value, to the Conservatives who were at war with the government.
报上说，在上个世纪那无数次内战中的一次，洛伦索·达萨曾是自由党总统阿吉莱奥·帕拉政府和一个名叫约瑟夫·科·科泽尼奥夫斯基的波兰人之间的牵线人。这个波兰人混在挂法国旗的商船圣安东尼号的船员中间，在本地逗留了数月，试图做成一笔不清不楚的军火生意。这位后来以约瑟夫·康拉德之名闻名于世的科泽尼奥夫斯基，不知怎么与洛伦索·达萨联系上了。后者用政府的钱向他买下了这船武器，手中持有政府的委任状和正式收据，而且是用法定纯金支付的。之后，据报上的说法，洛伦索·达萨声称那批武器在一次偷袭中丢失了，而那次偷袭根本是不可能发生的，事实上，他是以实打实的双倍价格把武器卖给了正在与政府作战的保守党人。
The story in Justice concluded by saying that Lorenzo Daza did not leave San Juan de la Ciénaga at the end of the last century in search of better opportunities for his daughter’s future, as he liked to say, but because he had been found out in his prosperous business of adulterating imported tobacco with shredded paper, which he did with so much skill that not even the most sophisticated smokers noticed the deception. They also uncovered his links to a clandestine international enterprise whose most profitable business at the end of the last century had been the illegal smuggling of Chinese from Panama. On the other hand, his suspect mule trading, which had done so much harm to his reputation, seemed to be the only honest business he had ever engaged in.
《正义报》最后说道，洛伦索·达萨上世纪末之所以离开圣胡安·德拉希耶纳加，并非像他常常爱说的那样，是要为女儿的未来寻找更好的天空，而是因为他在进口烟中掺杂碎纸屑的勾当被逮了个正着。他的手段极其精巧，就连最讲究的吸烟者也不会察觉到其中的骗局，他的生意因此十分兴隆。报纸还披露了他与一家地下国际公司之间的联系。这家公司在上世纪末利润最大的买卖便是从巴拿马非法引渡中国移民。看起来，曾最令他名誉受损的可疑的骡子生意反倒成了他唯一做过的诚实买卖。
When Florentino Ariza left his bed, with his back on fire and carrying a walking stick for the first time instead of his umbrella, his first excursion was to Fermina Daza’s house. She was like a stranger, ravaged by age, whose resentment had destroyed her desire to live. Dr. Urbino Daza, in the two visits he had made to Florentino Ariza during his exile, had spoken to him of how disturbed his mother was by the two stories in Justice. The first provoked her to such irrational anger at her husband’s infidelity and her friend’s disloyalty that she renounced the custom of visiting the family mausoleum one Sunday each month, for it infuriated her that he, inside his coffin, could not hear the insults she wanted to shout at him: she had a quarrel with a dead man. She let Lucrecia del Real know, through anyone who would repeat it to her, that she should take comfort in having had at least one real man in the crowd of people who had passed through her bed. As for the story about Lorenzo Daza, there was no way to know which affected her more, the story itself or her belated discovery of her father’s true character. But one or the other, or both, had annihilated her. Her hair, the color of stainless steel, had ennobled her face, but now it looked like ragged yellow strands of corn silk, and her beautiful panther eyes did not recover their old sparkle even in the brilliant heat of her anger. Her decision not to go on living was evident in every gesture. She had long ago given up smoking, whether locked in the bathroom or anywhere else, but she took it up again, for the first time in public, and with an uncontrolled voracity, at first with cigarettes she rolled herself, as she had always liked to do, and then with ordinary ones sold in stores because she no longer had time or patience to do it herself. Anyone else would have asked himself what the future could hold for a lame old man whose back burned with a burro’s saddle sores and a woman who longed for no other happiness but death. But not Florentino Ariza. He found a glimmer of hope in the ruins of disaster, for it seemed to him that Fermina Daza’s misfortune glorified her, that her anger beautified her, and that her rancor with the world had given her back the untamed character she had displayed at the age of twenty.
当弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨带着仍在灼烧的后背走下床来，第一次用雨豆树做的硬木拐杖代替雨伞出门时，去的第一个地方便是费尔明娜·达萨的家。他几乎认不出她来，在他面前的仿佛是一个备受摧残的陌生老妇，忿恨夺走了她活下去的欲·望。在弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨被放逐于世外般的养伤期间，乌尔比诺·达萨医生去看望过他两次，还把《正义报》的两篇文章给母亲带来的沮丧与绝望告诉了他。第一篇文章几乎使她丧失理智，对丈夫的不忠和女友的背叛愤怒之极，甚至放弃了每月都找某个星期日去家庭墓地祭奠的习惯，因为只要一想到他在那只盒子里根本听不见她的大声咒骂，她就不禁怒火中烧：她是在和死人吵架。她找愿意带话的人告诉卢克雷西娅·德尔雷亚尔，在和她上过床的那么多人中间，至少有一个男人，她也算有个安慰了。至于有关洛伦索·达萨的报道，她不知道究竟哪一点最让她难过，是文章本身，还是自己这么晚才发现父亲的真正身份。但这两者之一，或是两者一起，把她彻底击垮了。那曾将她的面容衬得高贵无比、有着纯净的钢铁颜色的头发，此时变成了黄色的玉米须，美丽的母豹眼睛即使闪烁着愤怒的火花，也已失去昔日的光芒。不愿再活下去的决心表现在她的一举一动之中。很久之前，她就已放弃了抽烟的习惯，无论是把自己关在浴室里，还是在其他什么地方，可如今，她竟当众抽起烟来，而且抽得十分放纵。刚开始，她仍像从前喜欢的那样，抽自己卷的烟，但随后竟抽起从市场上买的最普通的烟来，因为她已没时间，也没耐心去卷了。事实上，除了弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨以外的任何一个男人，见此情景都一定会自问，像他这样一个跛着腿、后背像被磨破了皮的驴子一样火辣辣疼的老人，像她那样一个除了死亡已不再渴望其他任何一种幸福的女人，未来究竟还能给他们带来些什么？但阿里萨不这样想。他在灾难的瓦砾中找到了一线希望之光，因为他觉得，费尔明娜·达萨的不幸使她得到升华，愤怒使她更加美丽，对世界的怨恨使她恢复了二十岁时那桀骜的个性。
She had new reasons for being grateful to Florentino Ariza, because in response to the infamous stories, he had written Justice an exemplary letter concerning the ethical responsibilities of the press and respect for other people’s honor. They did not publish it, but the author sent a copy to the Commercial Daily, the oldest and most serious newspaper along the Caribbean coast, which featured the letter on the front page. Signed with the pseudonym “Jupiter,” it was so reasoned, incisive, and well written that it was attributed to some of the most notable writers in the province. It was a lone voice in the middle of the ocean, but it was heard at great depth and great distance. Fermina Daza knew who the author was without having to be told, because she recognized some of the ideas and even a sentence taken directly from Florentino Ariza’s moral reflections. And so she received him with renewed affection in the disarray of her solitude. It was at this time that América Vicuña found herself alone one Saturday afternoon in the bedroom on the Street of Windows, and without looking for them, by sheer accident, she found the typed copies of the meditations of Florentino Ariza and the handwritten letters of Fermina Daza, in a wardrobe without a key.
而她对弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的感激刚刚又多了一个新理由，因为就在那两篇卑鄙的文章发表后不久，他给《正义报》发去了一封堪称典范的信，谈论报纸所应负的道德责任以及对别人应有的尊重。该信未能得到发表，但他又把信的副本寄给了加勒比沿岸历史最悠久、态度也最严肃的一家报纸——《商业日报》。他们把信醒目地刊登到头版上。信上署的笔名是朱庇特，整封信文采斐然，有理有据，一针见血，以至于人们认为它定是出自本省最杰出的某位作家之手。那是汪洋大海中一个孤独的声音，但听上去是那么的深邃，一直传到遥远的地方。无需别人指明，费尔明娜·达萨也知道信的作者是谁，因为她看出了弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的见解，甚至看到了一句有关道德思考的原话。因此，在她自暴自弃、心乱如麻的时候，还是怀着一种复苏的亲切接待了他。也正是在这段时期，一个星期六的下午，阿美利加·维库尼亚独自一人在窗户街的卧室中，纯属偶然地发现了那些记录着弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的思考的打字机信件的副本，以及费尔明娜·达萨手写的信件，就在一个没上锁的衣柜里。
Dr. Urbino Daza was happy about the resumption of the visits that gave so much encouragement to his mother. But Ofelia, his sister, came from New Orleans on the first fruit boat as soon as she heard that Fermina Daza had a strange friendship with a man whose moral qualifications were not the best. Her alarm grew to critical proportions during the first week, when she became aware of the familiarity and self-possession with which Florentino Ariza came into the house, and the whispers and fleeting lovers” quarrels that filled their visits until all hours of the night. What for Dr. Urbino Daza was a healthy affection between two lonely old people was for her a vice-ridden form of secret concubinage. Ofelia Urbino had always been like that, resembling Doña Blanca, her paternal grand mother, more than if she had been her daughter. Like her she was distinguished, like her she was arrogant, and like her she lived at the mercy of her prejudices. Even at the age of five she had been incapable of imagining an innocent friendship between a man and a woman, least of all when they were eighty years old. In a bitter argument with her brother, she said that all Florentino Ariza needed to do to complete his consolation of their mother was to climb into her widow’s bed. Dr. Urbino Daza did not have the courage to face her, he had never had the courage to face her, but his wife intervened with a serene justification of love at any age. Ofelia lost her temper.
乌尔比诺·达萨医生很高兴地看到，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的重新登门极大地鼓舞了母亲。可他妹妹奥菲利娅的态度却截然相反。她刚一听说费尔明娜·达萨与一个品行不那么端正的男人保持着一种奇怪的友谊，便立刻搭乘最早一班运送水果的轮船从新奥尔良赶了回来。从第一周起，她的惊恐就变成了一种危机感。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨走进她家大门时对一切都很熟悉，随意自如，并且拜访一直持续到天黑后很久，其间不断传来两人的窃窃私语，偶尔还有像情人一样的短暂争吵。在乌尔比诺·达萨医生看来，两位孤独的老人情投意合是件有益健康的好事，可她却认为，那是一种无异于秘密姘居的丑陋行为。奥菲利娅一向是这个样子，她更像她的祖母布兰卡夫人，简直就像祖母的亲生女儿，甚至比女儿还像。她和她一样出类拔萃，和她一样自命不凡，也和她一样依靠偏见生活。她无法想象一个男人和一个女人之间能有纯洁的友谊，就连五岁时都不可能，更何况八十岁。在与哥哥的一次激烈争论中，她嚷道，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨就差和母亲一起钻到她那张寡妇床上去安慰她了。乌尔比诺·达萨医生没有勇气和她对峙，从来如此。但他的妻子为他解了围，平静地辩解道，任何年龄的爱情都是合情合理的。奥菲利娅失去了控制。
“The only thing that hurts me is that I do not have the strength to give you the beating you deserve for being insolent and evil-minded,” she said. “But you will leave this house right now, and I swear to you on my mother’s grave that you will not set foot in it again as long as I live.”
“我唯一感到难过的，是没有力气用鞭子抽你一顿，那是你应得的，为的是你的无礼兼恶毒。”她说，“你现在马上给我滚出这个家，我以我母亲的遗骨发誓，只要我活着，你就休想再踏进这个家门。”
She insisted with so much vehemence on her determination to drive Florentino Ariza out of the ho use that it reached Fermina Daza’s ears. She called her to her bedroom, as she always did when she wanted to talk without being heard by the servants, and she asked her to repeat her accusations. Ofelia did not soften them: she was certain that Florentino Ariza, whose reputation as a pervert was known to everyone, was carrying on an equivocal relationship that did more harm to the family’s good name than the villainies of Lorenzo Daza or the ingenuous adventures of Juvenal Urbino. Fermina Daza listened to her without saying a word, without even blinking, but when she finished, Fermina Daza was another person: she had come back to life.
她义无反顾，坚持要把弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨从家中赶出去。最终，她的话传到了费尔明娜·达萨的耳朵里。她把她叫进卧室——当她想说一些不让女仆听见的话时就会这样做——让她把那些指责再说一遍。奥菲利娅没有减缓语气，声称弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的堕落行径尽人皆知，她敢肯定，他试图得到一种可疑的关系，而这会比洛伦索·达萨的胡作非为和胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺的天真冒险更加有损家庭清誉。费尔明娜·达萨一言不发地听着，甚至连眼皮都没有眨一下，但等女儿一说完，她就仿佛变了一个人似的：她又有了生命。
“Love is ridiculous at our age,” she shouted, “but at theirs it is revolting.”
“我们这个年龄的爱情已属荒唐，”她叫喊道，“到了他们那个年龄，那就是卑鄙！”
There was nothing to be done. When at last she was convinced that she had no more options, Ofelia returned to New Orleans. After much pleading, her mother would only agree to say goodbye to her, but she would not allow her in the house: she had sworn on her mother’s grave, and for her, during those dark days, that was the only thing left that was still pure.
没有什么可做的了。奥菲利娅最终确信她的一切请求都徒劳无用时，就回新奥尔良去了。她从母亲那里唯一得到的，是允许跟她道别。这是她再三恳求后，费尔明娜·达萨才答应的，但不允许她踏进家门：她已向母亲的尸骨发了誓，对她来说，在那段黑暗的日子里，母亲的尸骨是唯一干净的东西。
There was no power that could dissuade her. Ofelia went to live in her brother’s house, and from there she sent all kinds of petitions with distinguished emissaries. But it was in vain. Neither the mediation of her son nor the intervention of her friends could break Fermina Daza’s resolve. At last, in the colorful language of her better days, she allowed herself to confide in her daughter-in-law, with whom she had always maintained a certain plebeian camaraderie. “A century ago, life screwed that poor man and me because we were too young, and now they want to do the same thing because we are too old.” She lit a cigarette with the end of the one she was smoking, and then she gave vent to all the poison that was gnawing at her insides.
没有什么力量能使她收回成命。奥菲利娅只好搬到哥哥家去住，并且从那里派来一位又一位德高望重的说客，转达了各种恳求。但无济于事。儿子的调停和女友们的介入都没能使她心软。最后，她用她最好岁月里的精妙口才，对一直以来与她保持着某种庸俗默契的儿媳道出了心里话：“一个世纪前，人们毁掉了我和这个可怜男人的生活，因为我们太年轻；现在，他们又想在我们身上故伎重施，因为我们太老了。”她用烟蒂点燃另一支香烟，将侵蚀着她五脏六腑的毒气彻底呼出体外。
“They can all go to hell,” she said. “If we widows have any advantage, it is that there is no one left to give us orders.”
“让他们见鬼去吧！”她说，“如果说我们这些寡妇有什么优势的话，那就是再也没人能对我们发号施令了。”
On one of his early visits, when he was talking about his ships, Florentino Ariza had given Fermina Daza a formal invitation to take a pleasure cruise along the river. With one more day of traveling by train she could visit the national capital, which they, like most Caribbeans of their generation, still called by the name it bore until the last century: Santa Fe. But she maintained the prejudices of her husband, and she did not want to visit a cold, dismal city where the women did not leave their houses except to attend five o’clock Mass and where, she had been told, they could not enter ice cream parlors or public offices, and where the funerals disrupted traffic at all hours of the day or night, and where it had been drizzling since the year one: worse than in Paris. On the other hand, she felt a very strong attraction to the river, she wanted to see the alligators sunning themselves on the sandy banks, she wanted to be awakened in the middle of the night by the woman’s cry of the manatees, but the idea of so arduous a journey at her age, and a lone widow besides, seemed unrealistic to her.
在最初的几次拜访中，说起自己的轮船时，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨曾向费尔明娜·达萨发出过正式邀请，请她沿河去做一次散心旅行。而如果她愿意再坐一天火车，就可以到达共和国的首都，和同时代的大部分加勒比人一样，他们仍旧使用着首都在上世纪的旧名：圣菲。但她心中还保留着丈夫的偏见，不想去认识那座冰冷阴暗的城市。她曾被告知，那里的女人除了去望五点钟的弥撒，从不走出家门，既不能进冷饮店，也不能进公共事务场所；那里的街道每时每刻都挤满了送葬的队伍，而且从钉马掌的骡子[1]的年代起，就一直下着绵绵细雨，简直比巴黎还要糟糕。不过，她对河流有着强烈的兴趣，很想看看在沙滩上晒太阳的短吻鳄，还想在半夜被海牛那女人哭泣般的叫声惊醒。但想到自己这把年纪，又是孤身一人的寡妇，她便觉得如此艰难的旅行并不现实。（注：[1] 钉马掌的骡子，典出哥伦比亚、洪都拉斯和墨西哥等国的一个传说。西班牙殖民时期，一个穷苦人家的姑娘嫁给一个西班牙贵族青年后，忘了本，最后受到上天的惩罚，变成一头钉马掌的骡子。）
Florentino Ariza repeated the invitation later on, when she had decided to go on living without her husband, and then it had seemed more plausible. But after her quarrel with her daughter, embittered by the insults to her father, by her rancor toward her dead husband, by her anger at the hypocritical duplicities of Lucrecia del Real, whom she had considered her best friend for so many years, she felt herself superfluous in her own house. One afternoon, while she was drinking her infusion of worldwide leaves, she looked toward the morass of the patio where the tree of her misfortune would never bloom again.
后来，当她决心没有丈夫也要继续活下去时，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨又重提了他的邀请，她觉得可能性似乎大了一些。再后来，由于跟女儿大吵一架，再加上父亲所受的侮辱、对死去丈夫的怨恨，以及对卢克雷西娅·德尔雷亚尔虚伪恭维的愤怒——多年来，她一直视她为最好的朋友——这一切都让她痛心不已，她甚至觉得自己在家里已是个多余的人。一天下午，她喝着那种用世界各地的叶子泡出的荼，望了一眼院中的泥塘，那棵带给她不幸的树再也不会长出新芽了。
Fermina Daza looked at him thoughtfully.
费尔明娜·达萨沉思地看了他一眼。
“Take a boat,” said Florentino Ariza.
“乘船去吧。”弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨说。
“What I would like is to walk out of this house, and keep going, going, going, and never come back,” she said.
“我真想离开这个家，一直走，一直走，一直走，永远不再回来。”她说。
A moment before she said it, the thought had not even occurred to her, but all she had to do was admit the possibility for it to be considered a reality. Her son and daughter-in-law were delighted when they heard the news. Florentino Ariza hastened to point out that on his vessels Fermina Daza would be a guest of honor, she would have a cabin to herself which would be just like home, she would enjoy perfect service, and the Captain himself would attend to her safety and well-being. He brought route maps to encourage her, picture postcards of furious sunsets, poems to the primitive paradise of the Magdalena written by illustrious travelers and by those who had become travelers by virtue of the poems. She would glance at them when she was in the mood.
在说出这句话的前一刻，她其实还从未这样想过，但一旦承认了这种可能性，她就足以视其为铁板钉钉的事实了。儿子和儿媳听了很高兴。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨连忙保证，费尔明娜·达萨将在他的船上被奉为上宾，她会拥有一间专为她准备的舱室，让她感觉像在家里一样，还会享受到完美的服务，船长将亲自负责她的安全和起居。为了振奋她的精神，他给她带来了路线图，绚丽的黄昏景色明信片，还有歌颂马格达莱纳河畔原始天堂的诗篇，这些诗出自几位著名的旅行家之手，又或者可以说，正是因为这些诗，他们才成了著名的旅行家。她心情好时，会把这些东西翻上一翻。
“Well, I might just do that,” she said.
“嗯，这是有可能的。”她说。
In January 1824, Commodore Johann Bernard Elbers, the father of river navigation, had registered the first steamboat to sail the Magdalena River, a primitive old forty-horsepower wreck named Fidelity. More than a century later, one seventh of July at six o’clock in the evening, Dr. Urbino Daza and his wife accompanied Fermina Daza as she boarded the boat that was to carry her on her first river voyage. It was the first vessel built in the local shipyards and had been christened New Fidelity in memory of its glorious ancestor. Fermina Daza could never believe that so significant a name for them both was indeed a historical coincidence and not another conceit born of Florentino Ariza’s chronic romanticism.
一八二四年一月，海军准将、内河航运的创始人胡安·贝尔纳多·埃尔勃斯，注册了第一艘在马格达莱纳河上航行的蒸汽轮船，那是一艘四十马力的原始家伙，取名“忠诚号”。而一个多世纪以后，某个七月七日的下午六点钟，乌尔比诺·达萨医生和妻子陪伴着费尔明娜·达萨登上了将载她进行第一次河上旅行的航船。这是当地船厂造出的第一艘轮船，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨为纪念光荣的前辈，将它命名为“新忠诚号”。费尔明娜·达萨永远也无法相信，这个对他们来说如此意味深长的名字的确是历史的巧合，而非弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨那旷日持久的浪漫主义的又一个花样。
“You do not have to cajole me as if I were a baby,” she told him. “If I go, it will be because I have decided to and not because the landscape is interesting.”
“你不必像哄小孩子那样哄我。”她说，“我去旅行，是因为我决定了要去，并不是因为对风景的兴趣。”
When her son suggested that his wife accompany her, she cut him off abruptly: “I am too big to have anyone take care of me.” She herself arranged the details of the trip. She felt immense relief at the thought of spending eight days traveling upriver and five on the return, with no more than the bare necessities: half a dozen cotton dresses, her toiletries, a pair of shoes for embarking and dis embarking, her house slippers for the journey, and nothing else: her lifetime dream.
当儿子建议让自己的妻子陪同她去时，她断然拒绝了：“我这么大个人，不需要别人照顾。”她亲自安排了这次旅行的细节。想到那八天上行、五天下行的旅程，除了一些必需品什么都不用带，她就感到无比轻松。半打棉制衣服、梳妆和洗漱用品、一双登船和下船时穿的鞋子，还有旅行中穿的家用拖鞋，此外别无其他：这是她一生的梦想。
When in fact the day arrived, she took possession of the Presidential Suite as its lady and mistress. The ship’s Captain honored Dr. Urbino Daza and his wife, and Florentino Ariza, with champagne and smoked salmon. His name was Diego Samaritano, he wore a white linen uniform that was absolutely correct, from the tips of his boots to his cap with the R. C. C. insignia embroidered in gold thread, and he possessed, in common with other river captains, the stoutness of a ceiba tree, a peremptory voice, and the manners of a Florentine cardinal.
这一天终于来了，她以女主人和夫人的身份占据了总统舱。船长迭戈·萨马利塔诺用香槟和烟熏鲑鱼款待登船的乌尔比诺·达萨医生夫妇和弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨。他身穿白色亚麻制服，从靴子尖一直到用金线绣着CFC徽章的帽子，浑身上下完美无缺。和所有内河船长一样，他拥有木棉树般的魁梧身材、坚定果决的声音和佛罗伦萨红衣主教般的气派。
In any case, unlike the other riverboats, ancient and modem, New Fidelity boasted a suite next to the Captain’s quarters that was spacious and comfortable: a sitting room with bamboo furniture covered in festive colors, a double bedroom decorated in Chinese motifs, a bathroom with tub and shower, a large, enclosed observation deck with hanging ferns and an unobstructed view toward the front and both sides of the boat, and a silent cooling system that kept out external noises and maintained a climate of perpetual spring. These deluxe accommodations, known as the Presidential Suite because three Presidents of the Republic had already made the trip in them, had no commercial purpose but were reserved for high-ranking officials and very special guests. Florentino Ariza had ordered the suite built for that public purpose as soon as he was named President of the R. C. C., but his private conviction was that sooner or later it was going to be the joyous refuge of his wedding trip with Fermina Daza.
不管怎样，与其他老式与现代的内河船都不同，“新忠诚号”在船长室旁设有一个宽敞舒适的加舱，包含一间摆着色彩喜庆的竹制家具的客厅，一间全部用中国图案装饰的双人卧室，一个同时装了浴缸和淋浴设施的卫生间，一个十分宽阔的吊着蕨类植物的封闭瞭望台（从那里可以完整地看到船的前方和两侧），还有一套安静的制冷系统，使整个环境免受外界的干扰，而且始终保持春天的气候。这套豪华的舱室被称为“总统舱”，因为到那时为止，已有三位共和国总统在此度过航程。它并不用于商业目的，而是留给高级官员和一些极为特殊的客人使用的。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨刚被任命为CFC的董事长，就以树立公共形象为由，下令建造这个舱室，但他内心确信，迟早有一天，这里会成为他和费尔明娜·达萨新婚旅行中幸福的世外桃源。
When the final warning sounded, Dr. Urbino Daza and his wife bade her an undramatic goodbye, and Florentino Ariza accompanied them to the gangplank. Dr. Urbino Daza tried to stand aside so that Florentino Ariza could follow his wife, and only then did he realize that Florentino Ariza was also taking the trip. Dr. Urbino Daza could not hide his confusion.
最后一声警示的汽笛响起时，乌尔比诺·达萨医生和妻子程式化地与她道了别，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨陪他们走到下船舷梯。乌尔比诺·达萨医生想为他让路，让他跟在妻子后面，直到这时，他才意识到原来弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨同去旅行。乌尔比诺·达萨医生顿时无法掩饰自己的手足无措。
At seven o’clock the first departure warning was sounded, and Fermina Daza felt it resonate with a sharp pain in her left ear. The night before, her dreams had been furrowed with evil omens that she did not dare to decipher. Very early in the morning she had ordered the car to take her to the nearby seminary burial ground, which in those days was called La Manga Cemetery, and as she stood in front of his crypt, she made peace with her dead husband in a monologue in which she freely recounted all the just recriminations she had choked back. Then she told him the details of the trip and said goodbye for now. She refused to tell anyone anything except that she was going away, which is what she had done whenever she had gone to Europe, in order to avoid exhausting farewells. Despite all her travels, she felt as if this were her first trip, and as the day approached her agitation increased. Once she was on board she felt abandoned and sad, and she wanted to be alone to cry.
晚上七点，鸣响了第一声起航的汽笛。费尔明娜·达萨感到那回荡的汽笛声给自己的左耳带来一阵尖锐的刺痛。前一晚，她的梦中出现了好些不祥的预兆，她甚至不敢去分析其中的意思。一大早，她便让人把她带到离家不远的神学院墓地去，那里当时叫拉曼加墓地。她站在丈夫的墓前，自言自语地把从前压在心中的合理的斥责一股脑儿倾诉出来，最终原谅了这个死去的男人。之后，她对丈夫讲起这次旅行的细节，向他暂时告别。就像每次去欧洲旅行一样，她不想把自己出门的消息告诉其他任何人，以避免令人疲惫的送别。虽然她已有过很多次旅行，却感觉这仿佛是第一次。随着这一天的临近，她的忧虑不断增加。刚一登船，她便凄楚地感到自己被遗弃了，真想独自痛哭一场。
“But we did not discuss this,” he said.
“您没跟我们说过呀。”他说。
Florentino Ariza showed him the key to his cabin with too evident an intention: an ordinary cabin on the common deck. But to Dr. Urbino Daza this did not seem sufficient proof of innocence. He glanced at his wife in consternation, with the eyes of a drowning man looking for support, but her eyes were ice. She said in a very low, harsh voice: “You too?” Yes: he too, like his sister Ofelia, thought there was an age at which love began to be indecent. But he was able to recover in time, and he said goodbye to Florentino Ariza with a handshake that was more resigned than grateful.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨把自己舱室的钥匙拿给他看，意思很明确：他住的只是公共甲板上的一间普通舱室。可乌尔比诺·达萨医生觉得这个证据并不足以证明他的清白。他像遭遇了海难一般向妻子投去求助的一瞥，想为自己的彷徨无助寻找支点，但遇到的却是一双冰冷的眼睛。她严厉地低声说：“难道你也一样？”是的，他也一样，同他的妹妹奥菲利娅一样，认为爱情到一定年龄就变得不体面了。但他善于及时做出反应，同弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨握了握手以示告别，心中的无奈多过感激。
From the railing of the salon, Florentino Ariza watched them disembark. Just as he had hoped and wished, Dr. Urbino Daza and his wife turned to look at him before climbing into their automobile, and he waved his hand in farewell. They both responded in kind. He remained at the railing until the automobile disappeared in the dust of the freight yard, and then he went to his cabin to change into clothing more suitable for his first dinner on board in the Captain’s private dining room.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨从大厅栏杆处看着他们走下船去，正如他所等待与希望的那样，乌尔比诺·达萨医生和妻子在上汽车前，转过身来看了看他，于是，他向他们挥手告别。他们也朝他挥挥手。他继续站在栏杆前，直到汽车消失在货场的尘土之中，他才回到自己的舱室，换上一套更适合在船长的私人餐厅里享用登船后第一顿晚餐的衣服。
It was a splendid evening, which Captain Diego Samaritano seasoned with succulent tales of his forty years on the river, but Fermina Daza had to make an enormous effort to appear amused. Despite the fact that the final warning had been sounded at eight o’clock, when visitors had been obliged to leave and the gangplank had been raised, the boat did not set sail until the Captain had finished eating and gone up to the bridge to direct the operation. Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza stayed at the railing, surrounded by noisy passengers who made bets on how well they could identify the lights in the city, until the boat sailed out of the bay, moved along invisible channels and through swamps spattered with the undulating lights of the fishermen, and at last took a deep breath in the open air of the Great Magdalena River. Then the band burst into a popular tune, there was a joyous stampede of passengers, and in a mad rush, the dancing began.
这是一个美妙的夜晚，迭戈·萨马利塔诺船长用其四十年河运生涯的多彩故事为它增添了调料，可费尔明娜·达萨费了好大劲儿才装出开心的样子。虽然八点钟就拉响了最后一声汽笛，送行的人被请下船，舷梯也被升起，但直到船长用完晚餐，走上指挥台开始指挥，船才起锚。费尔明娜·达萨和弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨站在公共大厅的栏杆旁，混在那些极力辨认着城中每一处灯火的嘈杂旅客中间，探身远眺，直到轮船驶出港湾，进入看不清的河道和散布着起伏的渔船灯火的沼泽之中，最后，它终于在马格达莱纳大河自由的空气里顺畅地呼吸起来。这时，乐队奏起了一首流行的民间乐曲，旅客中爆发出一阵欢腾，舞会在一片混乱中开始了。
Fermina Daza preferred to take refuge in her cabin. She had not said a word for the entire evening, and Florentino Ariza allowed her to remain lost in her thoughts. He interrupted her only to say good night outside her cabin, but she was not tired, just a little chilly, and she suggested that they sit for a while on her private deck to watch the river. Florentino Ariza wheeled two wicker easy chairs to the railing, turned off the lights, placed a woolen shawl around her shoulders, and sat down beside her. With surprising skill, she rolled a cigarette from the little box of tobacco that he had brought her. She smoked it slowly, with the lit end inside her mouth, not speaking, and then she rolled another two and smoked them one right after the other. Sip by sip, Florentino Ariza drank two thermoses of mountain coffee.
费尔明娜·达萨更愿意躲到自己的舱室里去。整个晚上她都没说一句话，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨也任由她迷失在自己的思绪当中，只是在舱室前向她道了一声晚安。但她没有困意，只觉得有点冷。她建议两人一起坐上一会儿，在私人瞭望台上看一看河水。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨把两把靠背藤椅拖到栏杆前，关了灯，拿一条羊毛毯子披在她肩上，在她身边坐了下来。她从他送的一个小烟盒里取出烟丝，卷了一支，手法熟练得让人吃惊。她把点着的一端放进嘴里，慢慢地吸着，一言不发，接着又连卷了两支，续着抽完了。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨则一口接一口地喝下了两保温瓶的浓咖啡。
The lights of the city had disappeared over the horizon. Seen from the darkened deck in the light of a full moon, the smooth, silent river and the pastureland on either bank became a phosphorescent plain. From time to time one could see a straw hut next to the great bonfires signaling that wood for the ships” boilers was on sale. Florentino Ariza still had dim memories of the journey of his youth, and in dazzling flashes of lightning the sight of the river called them back to life as if they had happened yesterday. He recounted some of them to Fermina Daza in the belief that this might animate her, but she sat smoking in another world. Florentino Ariza renounced his memories and left her alone with hers, and in the meantime he rolled cigarettes and passed them to her already lit, until the box was empty. The music stopped after midnight, the voices of the passengers dispersed and broke into sleepy whispers, and two hearts, alone in the shadows on the deck, were beating in time to the breathing of the ship.
城市的灯火已消失在地平线上。从漆黑的瞭望台上看去，平缓而沉寂的河水和一轮满月下两岸的草丛，都变成了一片泛着磷光的平原。偶尔可以看到一间间茅屋，旁边点着熊熊的篝火，示意人们那里出售供轮船锅炉使用的木柴。对年轻时的那次旅行，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨只保持着模糊的记忆，但河上的景象使那些回忆复活了，一幕幕争抢着闪现在眼前，宛如昨日。他给费尔明娜·达萨讲了当时的一些情景，以为可以使她振奋起来，可她只是抽烟，仿佛置身于另一个世界。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨放弃了讲述，让她独自沉浸在自己的回忆之中。她不断卷着烟，一支接一支抽着，直到盒里的烟丝全都抽光了。午夜过后，音乐停下来，旅客的喧闹声也消散了，变成了枕边的窃窃私语。只剩下两颗孤独的心留在黑暗中的瞭望台上，随着轮船急促的喘息声跳动。
After a long while, Florentino Ariza looked at Fermina Daza by the light of the river. She seemed ghostly, her sculptured profile softened by a tenuous blue light, and he realized that she was crying in silence. But instead of consoling her or waiting until all her tears had been shed, which is what she wanted, he allowed panic to overcome him.
过了好一会儿，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨借着河水的反光看了看费尔明娜·达萨。她仿佛一个神秘的幽灵，雕塑般的侧影在微微的蓝色光芒下显得柔和甜蜜。他发现她竟在默默地哭泣。他没有安慰她，也没有像她希望的那样，在旁边耐心地等她眼泪流尽，而是有些惊慌失措。
Fermina Daza stopped smoking in order not to let go of the hand that was still in hers. She was lost in her longing to understand. She could not conceive of a husband better than hers had been, and yet when she recalled their life she found more difficulties than pleasures, too many mutual misunderstandings, useless arguments, unresolved angers. Suddenly she sighed: “It is incredible how one can be happy for so many years in the midst of so many squabbles, so many problems, damn it, and not really know if it was love or not.” By the time she finished unburdening herself, someone had turned off the moon. The boat moved ahead at its steady pace, one foot in front of the other: an immense, watchful animal. Fermina Daza had returned from her longing.
为了把手留在他的手中，费尔明娜·达萨停止了抽烟。她迫切地渴望能理解自己。她不能想象有哪个丈夫会比她曾经的丈夫更好，然而，回忆起他们的一生，她想到更多的是挫折，而非满足，他们之间曾有太多的误解，太多无谓的争执，以及太多没有释然的怨恨。突然，她叹了口气：“真无法相信，经历了那么多的吵闹与厌烦，这许多年竟还能感到幸福，见鬼，我都不知道那到底是不是爱情。”正当她把心里话一吐为快时，有人把月光熄灭了。轮船稳健地缓缓前行，一步接着一步，仿佛一只伺机而动的巨大猛兽。费尔明娜·达萨从热切的渴望中清醒了过来。
Then he reached out with two icy fingers in the darkness, felt for the other hand in the darkness, and found it waiting for him. Both were lucid enough to realize, at the same fleeting instant, that the hands made of old bones were not the hands they had imagined before touching. In the next moment, however, they were. She began to speak of her dead husband in the present tense, as if he were alive, and Florentino Ariza knew then that for her, too, the time had come to ask herself with dignity, with majesty, with an irrepressible desire to live, what she should do with the love that had been left behind without a master.
于是，他伸出冰冷的手指，摸索着黑暗中的另一只手，找到它时，他发现它正在等待着。一瞬间，两人都非常清楚地意识到，这两只苍老的手都不是他们在互相触碰之前所想象的样子。但片刻过后，它们就变成他们想象中的样子了。她开始讲起已故的丈夫，用的是现在时，好像他仍然活着。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨明白，她是到了一个自省的时刻，她将带着尊严、带着高傲、带着无法抑制的活下去的渴望自问，她要如何对待心中这份无主的爱情。
“Do you want to be alone?” he asked.
“你是想独自待着吗？”他问。
“If I did, I would not have told you to come in,” she said.
“如果是，我就不会叫你进来了。”她说。
“Not now,” she said to him. “I smell like an old woman.”
“已经不行了，”她对他说，“我闻起来尽是老太婆的味道。”
Florentino Ariza pressed her hand, bent toward her, and tried to kiss her on the cheek.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨握紧了她的手，俯下身去，想亲吻她的面颊。
“Go now,” she said.
“现在，你走吧。”她说。
But she refused, in her hoarse, soft voice.
她却躲开了，用沙哑而温柔的声音拒绝了他。
She heard him leave in the darkness, she heard his steps on the stairs, she heard him cease to exist until the next day. Fermina Daza lit another cigarette, and as she smoked she saw Dr. Juvenal Urbino in his immaculate linen suit, with his professional rigor, his dazzling charm, his official love, and he tipped his white hat in a gesture of farewell from another boat out of the past. “We men are the miserable slaves of prejudice,” he had once said to her. “But when a woman decides to sleep with a man, there is no wall she will not scale, no fortress she will not destroy, no moral consideration she will not ignore at its very root: there is no God worth worrying about.” Fermina Daza sat motionless until dawn, thinking about Florentino Ariza, not as the desolate sentinel in the little Park of the Evangels, whose memory did not awaken even a spark of nostalgia in her, but as he was now, old and lame, but real: the man who had always been within reach and whom she could never acknowledge. As the breathing boat carried her toward the splendor of the day’s first roses, all that she asked of God was that Florentino Ariza would know how to begin again the next day.
费尔明娜·达萨听见他在黑暗中走了出去，听见楼梯上响起他的脚步声，又听见他渐渐消失，第二天之前将不再出现。她又点燃了一支烟。正抽着，她看见了胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生。他穿着他那身完美无瑕的亚麻衣服，带着他那职业性的严肃，那令人头晕目眩的翩翩风度，以及那彬彬有礼的爱情，站在一艘往昔的船上，挥动着他白色的帽子向她告别。“我们男人都是偏见的可怜奴隶。”有一次他对她说，“相反，当一个女人决定和一个男人睡觉时，就没有她跃不过去的围墙，没有她推不倒的堡垒，也没有她抛不下的道德顾虑，事实上，根本就没有能管得住她的上帝。”费尔明娜·达萨继续坐在那里，纹丝不动，直到天亮。她在想弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨，但不是福音花园中那个忧郁的哨兵，那个人已无法在她心中激起丝毫思念的涟漪，她想的是此时的他，老态龙钟，步履蹒跚，却如此真实：这人一直就在她触手可及的地方，她却从未认出他真实的样子。当轮船喘着粗气，拖着她驶向第一缕玫瑰色的霞光时，她唯一祈求上帝的，是让弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨知道第二天应从何处重新开始。
He did. Fermina Daza instructed the steward to let her sleep as long as she wanted, and when she awoke there was a vase on the night table with a fresh white rose, drops of dew still on it, as well as a letter from Florentino Ariza with as many pages as he had written since his farewell to her. It was a calm letter that did not attempt to do more than express the state of mind that had held him captive since the previous night: it was as lyrical as the others, as rhetorical as all of them, but it had a foundation in reality. Fermina Daza read it with some embarrassment because of the shameless racing of her heart. It concluded with the request that she advise the steward when she was ready, for the Captain was waiting on the bridge to show them the operation of the ship.
他的确知道。费尔明娜·达萨吩咐侍者不要叫醒她，让她尽情地睡上一觉。她醒来时，床头柜上放着一个花瓶，里面插着一枝新鲜的白玫瑰，花瓣上还挂着露珠，旁边是一封弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的信，厚厚的一沓，他一定是从她这里回去后就开始写，才能写出这么多页来。这是一封平静的信，仅仅为了表达他昨晚以来的心境：它和以往的信一样抒情，也和他所有的信一样字斟句酌，但却立足于现实。费尔明娜·达萨读完信，为自己那毫无顾忌的心跳感到有些害羞。在信的末尾，他请求她准备好之后通知侍者，因为船长正在指挥台上等着他们，想给他们展示一下轮船是如何运转的。
She was ready at eleven o’clock, bathed and smelling of flower-scented soap, wearing a very simple widow’s dress of gray etamine, and completely recovered from the night’s turmoil. She ordered a sober breakfast from the steward, who was dressed in impeccable white, and in the Captain’s personal service, but she did not send a message for anyone to come for her. She went up alone, dazzled by the cloudless sky, and she found Florentino Ariza talking to the Captain on the bridge. He looked different to her, not only because she saw him now with other eyes, but because in reality he had changed. Instead of the funereal clothing he had worn all his life, he was dressed in comfortable white shoes, slacks, and a linen shirt with an open collar, short sleeves, and his monogram embroidered on the breast pocket. He also had on a white Scottish cap and removable dark lenses over his perpetual eyeglasses for myopia. It was evident that everything was being used for the first time and had been bought just for the trip, with the exception of the well-worn belt of dark brown leather, which Fermina Daza noticed at first glance as if it were a fly in the soup. Seeing him like this, dressed just for her in so patent a manner, she could not hold back the fiery blush that rose to her face. She was embarrassed when she greeted him, and he was more embarrassed by her embarrassment. The knowledge that they were behaving as if they were sweethearts was even more embarrassing, and the knowledge that they were both embarrassed embarrassed them so much that Captain Samaritano noticed it with a tremor of compassion. He extricated them from their difficulty by spending the next two hours explaining the controls and the general operation of the ship. They were sailing very slowly up a river without banks that meandered between arid sand bars stretching to the horizon. But unlike the troubled waters at the mouth of the river, these were slow and clear and gleamed like metal under the merciless sun. Fermina Daza had the impression that it was a delta filled with islands of sand.
十一点钟时，她已准备停当，洗过澡，浑身散发着花一般的香皂气味，身着一套极为朴素的灰色纱罗寡妇服，已完全从夜晚的苦痛中恢复过来。她向穿着一尘不染的白色制服、专为船长服务的侍者要了份简单的早餐，但没有让他捎口信叫谁来接她。她独自走到指挥台上，天空万里无云，有些晃眼。她看见弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨正在与船长交谈。她觉得他像变了个人似的，不是因为她此时已对他另眼相看，而是因为他真的变了模样。他没有穿他那身穿了一辈子的参加葬礼似的衣服，取而代之的是一双舒适的白皮鞋，亚麻长裤，亚麻开领短袖衬衫，胸前的口袋上绣着他姓名首字母的花押字。此外，他头上还戴了顶苏格兰帽，也是白色的，那副他始终戴着的近视镜上则夹了一副可拆卸的深色镜片。显然，这些东西他都是第一次穿戴，而且是专为这次旅行才买的。只除了那条早已过旧的棕色皮带，费尔明娜·达萨一眼就看见了它，仿佛发现了汤中的苍蝇一般。看到他如此明显地为自己着意打扮，她的脸颊不禁泛起一抹火辣辣的红晕。跟他打招呼时，她心慌意乱。见她如此，他也慌乱起来。当两人意识到他们的举止竟像情侣一般，便越发不知所措，而当他们又意识到自己的窘态时，更是慌乱得一发不可收拾，以至于萨马利塔诺船长也注意到了这一点，心中不禁同情地为之一颤。他把他们从尴尬中解救出来，花了整整两个小时，向他们讲解如何指挥轮船以及轮船的机械构造。他们缓慢地航行在一段看不见两岸的河道上，河水在荒芜的河滩间一直延伸到地平线上。与交汇处的浑浊水流不同，这里的河水平缓而清澈，在无情的烈日下闪烁着金属的光芒。费尔明娜·达萨觉得，这里就像一片被沙岛包围的三角洲。
Florentino Ariza, in fact, was surprised by the changes, and would be even more surprised the following day, when navigation became more difficult and he realized that the Magdalena, father of waters, one of the great rivers of the world, was only an illusion of memory. Captain Samaritano explained to them how fifty years of uncontrolled deforestation had destroyed the river: the boilers of the river-boats had consumed the thick forest of colossal trees that had oppressed Florentino Ariza on his first voyage. Fermina Daza would not see the animals of her dreams: the hunters for skins from the tanneries in New Orleans had exterminated the alligators that, with yawning mouths, had played dead for hours on end in the gullies along the shore as they lay in wait for butterflies, the parrots with their shrieking and the monkeys with their lunatic screams had died out as the foliage was destroyed, the manatees with their great breasts that had nursed their young and wept on the banks in a forlorn woman’s voice were an extinct species, annihilated by the armored bullets of hunters for sport.
的确，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨对河道的变化感到诧异。第二天，当航行变得更加艰难时，他就更是惊讶了。他发现，世界大河之一，他的父亲河马格达莱纳河，如今已成记忆中的幻影。萨马利塔诺船长向他们解释了毫无理性的滥伐森林如何在五十年里毁掉了河流：轮船的锅炉将茂密的雨林消耗殆尽，想当初，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨第一次旅行时还曾因那些参天的大树感到压抑呢。费尔明娜·达萨也不会看到她梦中的动物了：新奥尔良皮革厂的猎人们杀光了在河岸峭壁上一连几小时张着大嘴装死、伺机捕捉蝴蝶的短吻鳄；随着枝繁叶茂的森林的消亡，叽里呱啦叫个不停的鹦鹉和像疯子一般吵嚷的长尾猴也逐渐销声匿迹；而用硕大的乳房在河滩上给幼畜喂奶、像悲伤的女人一样哭泣的海牛，也被寻开心的猎人用穿甲子弹灭绝了。
“It is all the river we have left,” said the Captain.
“这是我们仅剩的一片河水了。”船长对她说。
Captain Samaritano had an almost maternal affection for the manatees, because they seemed to him like ladies damned by some extravagant love, and he believed the truth of the legend that they were the only females in the animal kingdom that had no mates. He had always opposed shooting at them from the ship, which was the custom despite the laws prohibiting it. Once, a hunter from North Carolina, his papers in order, had disobeyed him, and with a well-aimed bullet from his Springfield rifle had shattered the head of a manatee mother whose baby became frantic with grief as it wailed over the fallen body. The Captain had the orphan brought on board so that he could care for it, and left the hunter behind on the deserted bank, next to the corpse of the murdered mother. He spent six months in prison as the result of diplomatic protests and almost lost his navigator’s license, but he came out prepared to do it again, as often as the need arose. Still, that had been a historic episode: the orphaned manatee, which grew up and lived for many years in the rare-animal zoo in San Nicolás de las Barrancas, was the last of its kind seen along the river.
萨马利塔诺船长对海牛有着一种近乎母性的爱，因为他觉得它们就像是因某种误入歧途的爱情而被判罪的夫人们，而且，他相信传说，即海牛是动物王国中唯一一个只有雌性而没有雄性的物种。他一向反对人们从船上射杀海牛，但尽管有法律明令禁止这一行为，人们还是会习惯性地举枪。曾经有一个带着合法证件的北卡罗来纳猎人，违背船长的命令，用他那杆斯普林菲尔德步枪一枪打爆了一只母海牛的脑袋，小海牛痛苦得发了疯，趴在母海牛的尸体上哭号。船长命人把孤零零的小海牛弄上船，亲自照料，而把猎人扔在了荒无人烟的河滩上，就在被他射杀的海牛妈妈的尸体旁。由于来自外交方面的抗议，船长坐了六个月牢，差点丢掉航海执照。但出狱后，他仍准备坚持己见——类似的事见一次就管一次。不过，这次事件已被载入历史：那只海牛孤儿后来在巴兰卡斯的圣尼古拉斯稀有物种动物园里长大，并且生活了许多年，它是人们在这条河上见过的最后一只海牛。
Fermina Daza, who had felt no fondness for the Captain, was so moved by the tenderhearted giant that from that morning on he occupied a privileged place in her heart. She was not wrong: the trip was just beginning, and she would have many occasions to realize that she had not been mistaken.
起初对船长并没有什么好感的费尔明娜·达萨，此刻被这个充满柔情的彪形大汉深深打动，从这天早晨起，她就把他摆在了自己心里一个特殊的位置上。她是对的，旅行才刚刚开始，日后她将有更多机会发现自己做得没有错。
“Each time I pass that bank,” he said, “I pray to God that the gringo will board my ship so that I can leave him behind all over again.”
“每次经过这段河滩时，”船长说，“我都恳求上帝让那个美国佬再来坐我的船，我好再次把他扔在这里。”
Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza remained on the bridge until it was time for lunch. It was served a short while after they passed the town of Calamar on the opposite shore, which just a few years before had celebrated a perpetual fiesta and now was a ruined port with deserted streets. The only creature they saw from the boat was a woman dressed in white, signaling to them with a handkerchief. Fermina Daza could not understand why she was not picked up when she seemed so distressed, but the Captain explained that she was the ghost of a drowned woman whose deceptive signals were intended to lure ships off course into the dangerous whirlpools along the other bank. They passed so close that Fermina Daza saw her in sharp detail in the sunlight, and she had no doubt that she did not exist, but her face seemed familiar.
费尔明娜·达萨和弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨在指挥台上一直待到午饭时间，那时船刚刚经过卡拉玛尔村。这个村庄在几年前还天天都像过节一样喜庆，如今，街道上却满目荒凉，成了一个废墟港口。从船上能看到的唯一生命是一个身穿白衣的女人，正挥动手绢打着手势。费尔明娜·达萨不明白，她那么可怜，为何不把她接上船来。船长解释说，那是个溺水而死的女人的灵魂，做出欺骗的手势，为的是把船错误地引向对岸危险的旋涡。他们从离她很近的地方驶过，阳光下，费尔明娜·达萨真切地看清了所有的细节，毫不怀疑那个女人事实上并不存在，可她的脸却让费尔明娜·达萨觉得似曾相识。
It was a long, hot day. Fermina Daza returned to her cabin after lunch for her inevitable siesta, but she did not sleep well because of a pain in her ear, which became worse when the boat exchanged mandatory greetings with another R. C. C. vessel as they passed each other a few leagues above Barranca Vieja. Florentino Ariza fell into instantaneous sleep in the main salon, where most of the passengers without cabins were sleeping as if it were midnight, and close to the spot where he had seen her disembark, he dreamed of Rosalba. She was traveling alone, wearing her Mompox costume from the last century, and it was she and not the child who slept in the wicker cage that hung from the ceiling. It was a dream at once so enigmatic and so amusing that he enjoyed it for the rest of the afternoon as he played dominoes with the Captain and two of the passengers who were friends of his.
那是漫长而炎热的一天。费尔明娜·达萨吃过午饭，便回到舱室去睡她那必不可少的午觉。但因为耳朵痛，她没能睡好。在“老峡谷”上游几里处，他们的船和另一艘CFC的船相遇，按规矩互相鸣笛致意，这让她的耳痛更严重了。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨坐在大厅里打了个盹儿。和夜里一样，大部分没有舱室的旅客此刻都在那里睡觉。在离他当初看见罗萨尔芭上船的地方不远处，他在梦中见到了她。她在独自旅行，还穿着那身上世纪蒙波斯的衣服。但这一次是她，而不是那个婴儿，在那只挂在廊檐下的柳条鸟笼里午睡。这是一个既令人费解又十分有趣的梦，整个下午，他都一边和船长及两名旅客朋友玩多米诺骨牌，一边回味着这个梦。
It grew cooler as the sun went down, and the ship came back to life. The passengers seemed to emerge from a trance; they had just bathed and changed into fresh clothing, and they sat in the wicker armchairs in the salon, waiting for supper, which was announced at exactly five o’clock by a waiter who walked the deck from one end to the other and rang a sacristan’s bell, to mocking applause. While they were eating, the band began to play fandangos, and the dancing continued until midnight.
太阳落山时，炎热消退，船上又恢复了生气。旅客们像刚从冬眠中苏醒一般，洗好澡，换上干净的衣服，纷纷露面，占据了大厅的藤椅，等待开晚饭。五点钟整，一名侍者从甲板的一头跑到另一头，在人们嘲弄的掌声中摇响教堂司事的铃铛，宣布晚餐开始。用餐时，乐队奏起方丹戈舞曲，舞会将一直持续到半夜。
Fermina Daza did not care to eat because of the pain in her ear, and she watched as the first load of wood for the boilers was taken on from a bare gully where there was nothing but stacked logs and a very old man who supervised the operation. There did not seem to be another person for many leagues around. For Fermina Daza it was a long, tedious stop that would have been unthinkable on the ocean liners to Europe, and the heat was so intense that she could feel it even on her cooled observation deck. But when the boat weighed anchor again there was a cool breeze scented with the heart of the forest, and the music became more lively. In the town of Sitio Nuevo there was only one light in only one window in only one house, and the port office did not signal either cargo or passengers, so the boat passed by without a greeting.
费尔明娜·达萨由于耳痛的烦扰，不想吃晚饭。她看见了航船首次加装锅炉木柴的情景。那是在一个光秃秃的峭壁旁，除了成堆的木头，以及照顾这项生意的一个年迈的老头儿之外，周围什么也没有，甚至方圆几里都空无一人。在费尔明娜·达萨看来，一次如此漫长而枯燥的临时停靠，在欧洲的远洋轮船上简直是不可想象的，即便在装有冷气的瞭望台里，她依旧感到酷热难耐。但当轮船重新起锚后，一阵清风吹来，仿佛让人闻到了森林内心的芬芳，船上的音乐也变得更欢快了。在希蒂奥·诺埃沃镇，只有一所房子中的一扇窗里亮着一盏孤灯，港口办公室也没有发出有货物或乘客登船的信号，因此，轮船没有鸣笛致意便开了过去。
Fermina Daza had spent the entire afternoon wondering what stratagems Florentino Ariza would use to see her without knocking at her cabin door, and by eight o’clock she could no longer bear the longing to be with him. She went out into the passageway, hoping to meet him in what would seem a casual encounter, and she did not have to go very far: Florentino Ariza was sitting on a bench in the passageway, as silent and forlorn as he had been in the Park of the Evangels, and for over two hours he had been asking himself how he was going to see her. They both made the same gesture of surprise that they both knew was feigned, and together they strolled the first-class deck, crowded with young people, most of them boisterous students who, with some eagerness, were exhausting themselves in the final fling of their vacation. In the lounge, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza sat at the bar as if they were students themselves and drank bottled soft drinks, and suddenly she saw herself in a frightening situation. She said: “How awful!” Florentino Ariza asked her what she was thinking that caused her so much distress.
整个下午，费尔明娜·达萨都在问自己，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨会用什么办法在不敲开她舱门的情况下见到她。快到八点时，她再也按捺不住想跟他在一起的渴望。她来到走廊上，希望以一种看似偶然的方式遇见他。事实上，她不需要走多远：弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨就坐在走廊的一张长靠背椅上，像在福音花园中一样沉默而忧伤，从两小时前，他就在问自己如何才能见到她。两人都露出同样吃惊的表情，但心里都清楚那是装出来的。他们一起漫步在一等舱的甲板上。那里挤满了年轻人，大部分是吵闹的学生，他们正急切地享受假期的最后狂欢，筋疲力尽地欢闹着。在小酒吧里，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨和费尔明娜·达萨也像学生一样，坐在吧台前各自喝下了一瓶冷饮。她突然发现自己处于一种可怖的境地，不禁说道：“多可怕啊！”弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨问她在想什么，是什么带给她这样的感觉。
They both decided to turn in when the music stopped, after a long, untroubled conversation on the dark observation deck. There was no moon, the sky was cloudy, and on the horizon flashes of lightning, with no claps of thunder, illuminated them for an instant. Florentino Ariza rolled cigarettes for her, but she did not smoke more than a few, for she was tormented by pain that would ease for a few moments and flare up again when the boat bellowed as it passed another ship or a sleeping village, or when it slowed to sound the depth of the river. He told her with what longing he had watched her at the Poetic Festival, on the balloon flight, on the acrobat’s velocipede, with what longing he had waited all year for public festivals just so he could see her. She had often seen him as well, and she had never imagined that he was there only to see her. However, it was less than a year since she had read his letters and wondered how it was possible that he had never competed in the Poetic Festival: there was no doubt he would have won. Florentino Ariza lied to her: he wrote only for her, verses for her, and only he read them. Then it was she who reached for his hand in the darkness, and she did not find it waiting for her as she had waited for his the night before. Instead, she took him by surprise, and Florentino Ariza’s heart froze.
他们在昏暗的瞭望台上畅快地长谈起来，直到音乐停歇，才回去睡觉。这晚没有月亮，天空阴沉，地平线上划过一道道无声的闪电，时而在一瞬间将他们照亮。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨为她卷好一支支香烟，但她被耳痛折磨着，只抽了四支。疼痛偶尔会减轻一些，但每当他们的船与其他船只相遇，或是从某个熟睡的村庄前经过，又或是为了试探水深而缓慢前行时，它那汽笛的鸣叫声便会加剧她的痛楚。他告诉她，每当他在花会上，在热气球飞行时，在杂技脚踏车的展览中看见她，他的心情是多么激动，一年又一年里，他又是多么热切地盼望公众节日的到来，只为了能够看见她。她也曾见过他许多次，但从未想过他出现在那里仅仅是为了与她相遇。然而，不到一年前，当读到他的信时，她曾突然问自己，他怎么可能从未参加过花会的诗赛。毫无疑问，如果他参加了，一定会获奖。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨向她说了谎：他只为她写作，所有的诗句都是献给她的，而只有他自己是那些诗句的读者。这时，换成她在黑暗中主动搜寻他的手，当她找到时，它并不像前一晚她的手那样在等待，而是在被抓住时惊慌失措。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的心仿佛凝固了。
“The poor old couple,” she said. “The ones who were beaten to death in the boat.”
“我在想那对可怜的老人。”她说，“就是在小艇上被人用桨打死的那两个。”
“How strange women are,” he said.
“女人多奇怪啊！”他说。
She burst into laughter, a deep laugh like a young dove’s, and she thought again about the old couple in the boat. It was incised: the image would always pursue her. But that night she could bear it because she felt untroubled and calm, as she had few times in her life: free of all blame. She would have remained there until dawn, silent, with his hand perspiring ice into hers, but she could not endure the torment in her ear. So that when the music was over, and then the bustle of the ordinary passengers hanging their hammocks in the salon had ended, she realized that her pain was stronger than her desire to be with him. She knew that telling him about it would alleviate her suffering, but she did not because she did not want to worry him. For now it seemed to her that she knew him as well as if she had lived with him all her life, and she thought him capable of ordering the boat back to port if that would relieve her pain.
她发出一阵深沉的笑声，像年轻的小鸽子一般，但随即又想起小艇上的那对老人。命中注定，那影子将会一直跟随着她，但这天晚上，她承受住了，因为她觉得平静安详，这是她一生中少有的时刻：一身清白，毫无负罪感。她真想就这样一直待到天亮，什么也不说，只把他那汗涔涔的冰冷的手握在自己手中，但无奈，她忍受不了耳痛的折磨。当音乐停下来，普通舱的旅客在大厅里忙碌了一阵，纷纷挂起吊床之后，她感到自己耳痛的程度超过了想和他在一起的愿望。其实她知道，单是把疼痛告诉他就能减轻自己的痛楚，但她没有这样做，为的是不让他担心。因为此时的她觉得自己已对他了然于心，就仿佛和他共度了一生似的，她相信，只要能让她减轻疼痛，他会下令让船开回港口。
Florentino Ariza had foreseen how things would be that night, and he withdrew. At the door of her cabin he tried to kiss her good night, but she offered him her left cheek. He insisted, with labored breath, and she offered him her other cheek, with a coquettishness that he had not known when she was a schoolgirl. Then he insisted again, and she offered him her lips, she offered her lips with a profound trembling that she tried to suppress with the laugh she had forgotten after her wedding night.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨预料到这一晚事情会如此发展，于是起身告退。走到舱室门口时，他试图亲吻告别，但她向他侧过了左脸。他一再坚持，呼吸急促起来。于是，她又凑过右边的脸颊，那妩媚的娇态甚至在她上学时他也不曾见过。他再次坚持，终于，她用双唇迎接了他。她发自内心地颤抖着，试图用自新婚之夜起就已经忘记的笑声压制住自己的颤抖。
“My God,” she said, “ships make me so crazy.”
“我的上帝！”她说，“在船上我多疯狂啊！”
Florentino Ariza shuddered: as she herself had said, she had the sour smell of old age. Still, as he walked to his cabin, making his way through the labyrinth of sleeping hammocks, he consoled himself with the thought that he must give off the same odor, except his was four years older, and she must have detected it on him, with the same emotion. It was the smell of human fermentation, which he had perceived in his oldest lovers and they had detected in him. The Widow Nazaret, who kept nothing to herself, had told him in a cruder way: “Now we stink like a henhouse.” They tolerated each other because they were an even match: my odor against yours. On the other hand, he had often taken care of América Vicuña, whose diaper smell awakened maternal instincts in him, but he was disturbed at the idea that she had disliked his odor: the smell of a dirty old man. But all that belonged to the past. The important thing was that not since the afternoon when Aunt Escolástica left her missal on the counter in the telegraph office had Florentino Ariza felt the happiness he felt that night: so intense it frightened him.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨战栗了一下：的确，如她先前所说，她身上有一股上了年纪的酸味。然而，当他在熟睡的旅客那一张张吊床组成的迷宫中辟出道路向舱室走去时，还是自我安慰地想，他身上肯定也有同样的味道，而且还要再老上四岁，而她一定也怀着同样的激情感受到了这一点。这是人发酵后的气味，他曾在那些最老的情人身上察觉到过，而她们也在他身上闻到过。拿撒勒的寡妇向来毫无顾忌，说的话更为刻薄：“我们闻上去已经有股兀鹫的味儿了。”两人互相忍受，是因为彼此半斤八两：我的味儿正好与你的味儿相当。然而，对阿美利加·维库尼亚，他很多时候都要小心翼翼，她身上那股襁褓中婴儿的味道时常唤起他内心母性的本能，可一想到她一定无法忍受他那股老色鬼的气味，他便十分不安。但这一切都过去了。重要的是，自从埃斯科拉斯蒂卡姑妈将弥撒经书放在电报室的柜台上的那个下午，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨从未像今晚这样幸福过：这种幸福如此强烈，他甚至惶恐起来。
At five o’clock he was beginning to doze off, when the ship’s purser woke him in the port of Zambrano to hand him an urgent telegram. It was signed by Leona Cassiani and dated the previous day, and all its horror was contained in a single line: América Vicuña dead yesterday reasons unknown. At eleven o’clock in the morning he learned the details from Leona Cassiani in a telegraphic conference during which he himself operated the transmitting equipment for the first time since his years as a telegraph operator. América Vicuña, in the grip of mortal depression because she had failed her final examinations, had drunk a flask of laudanum stolen from the school infirmary. Florentino Ariza knew in the depths of his soul that the story was incomplete. But no: América Vicuña had left no explana tory note that would have allowed anyone to be blamed for her decision. The family, informed by Leona Cassiani, was arriving now from Puerto Padre, and the funeral would take place that afternoon at five o’clock. Florentino Ariza took a breath. The only thing he could do to stay alive was not to allow himself the anguish of that memory. He erased it from his mind, although from time to time in the years that were left to him he would feel it revive, with no warning and for no reason, like the sudden pang of an old scar.
五点钟时，他才刚刚睡着，船上的会计在桑布拉诺港把他叫醒，为的是交给他一封加急电报。电报的署名是莱昂娜·卡西亚尼，于前一天发出。全部的惊恐集中于一行文字：阿美利加·维库尼亚昨日死亡，原因不详。早上十一点，他通过电报与莱昂娜·卡西亚尼取得了联系，了解了事情的细节。他亲自操作发报设备，自从他不再当电报员以来，这还是第一次。由于期末考试不及格，阿美利加·维库尼亚陷入了极度的沮丧，喝下了一瓶从学校医务室偷出来的阿片酊。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨内心深知，这并非事情的全部。但是，不，阿美利加·维库尼亚没有留下只言片语，能让人们将她的决定归咎于什么人。她的家人此刻正从父亲港赶来，是莱昂娜·卡西亚尼通知了他们，葬礼将在当天下午五点举行。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨吸了口气。为了继续活下去，他唯一能做的，就是不让这个回忆折磨他。他把它从记忆中抹掉了，尽管在余下的岁月里，他时常会不合时宜地突然想起这件不幸的事故，就像旧日的伤疤带来的那种瞬间的剌痛。
There were so few places for taking on wood, and they were so far apart from each other, that by the fourth day of the trip the New Fidelity had run out of fuel. She was stranded for almost a week while her crew searched bogs of ashes for the last scattered trees. There was no one else: the woodcutters had abandoned their trails, fleeing the ferocity of the lords of the earth, fleeing the invisible cholera, fleeing the larval wars that governments were bent on hiding with distracted decrees. In the meantime, the passengers in their boredom held swimming contests, organized hunting expeditions, and returned with live iguanas that they split open from top to bottom and sewed up again with baling needles after removing the clusters of soft, translucent eggs that they strung over the railings to dry. The poverty-stricken prostitutes from nearby villages followed in the path of the expeditions, improvised tents in the gullies along the shore, brought music and liquor with them, and caroused across the river from the stranded vessel.
供应木柴的地方少之又少，而且间隔很远，旅行的第四天，“新忠诚号”就断了燃料。船停泊了几乎一个星期，在此期间，船上的人分批深入到四处漂浮着灰烬的沼泽中去，寻找零星分散的最后几棵树木。这里一个人也没有：樵夫们已离开了林间小路，以逃避大地之神的暴虐惩罚，逃避看不见的霍乱，以及政府借转移视线的法令试图掩盖的隐秘战争。这段时间，百无聊赖的旅客搞起了游泳比赛，还组织了狩猎探险队。他们带回一只只活鬣蜥，从上而下剖开它们的肚子，取出一串串半透明、软乎乎的蛋，然后用打背包的针把肚子缝上，将那一串串蛋挂在栏杆上晒干。附近村庄的穷妓女们追随着探险队的足迹，在岸边的峭壁上搭起临时帐篷，带来音乐和酒桶，在停泊不前的轮船对面狂欢起来。
The days that followed were hot and interminable. The river became muddy and narrow, and instead of the tangle of colossal trees that had astonished Florentino Ariza on his first voyage, there were calcinated flatlands stripped of entire forests that had been devoured by the boilers of the riverboats, and the debris of godforsaken villages whose streets remained flooded even in the crudest droughts. At night they were awakened not by the siren songs of manatees on the sandy banks but by the nauseating stench of corpses floating down to the sea. For there were no more wars or epidemics, but the swollen bodies still floated by. The Captain, for once, was solemn: “We have orders to tell the passengers that they are accidental drowning victims.” Instead of the screeching of the parrots and the riotous noise of invisible monkeys, which at one time had intensified the stifling midday heat, all that was left was the vast silence of the ravaged land.
接下来的几天炎热而没有尽头。河水变得浑浊不堪，河道也越来越窄，初次旅行中曾让弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨大吃一惊的那些纵横交错的参天大树已然不见，取而代之的是烧焦的平地、被轮船锅炉耗尽的整片森林的残骸，以及被上帝遗弃的村庄的瓦砾——如今，这些村庄的街道，即使在最为干旱的时期也会洪水泛滥。夜晚，让他们醒来的不是河滩上的海牛那塞壬般的歌声，而是漂向大海的尸体恶臭。虽然战争已经结束，瘟疫也不再流行，但一具具肿胀的尸体还是源源不断地漂过。船长第一次欲言又止：“我们奉命告诉旅客，这些人都是意外溺水而亡。”昔日里，鹦鹉叽里呱啦的叫声和看不见的长尾猴的喧闹，会加剧午间的闷热，而此时，只剩下荒芜的大地上无边的寂静。
Long before he became President of the R. C. C., Florentino Ariza had received alarming reports on the state of the river, but he barely read them. He would calm his associates: “Don’t worry, by the time the wood is gone there will be boats fueled by oil.” With his mind clouded by his passion for Fermina Daza, he never took the trouble to think about it, and by the time he realized the truth, there was nothing anyone could do except bring in a new river. Even in the days when the waters were at their best, the boats had to anchor at night, and then even the simple fact of being alive became unendurable. Most of the passengers, above all the Europeans, abandoned the pestilential stench of their cabins and spent the night walking the decks, brushing away all sorts of predatory creatures with the same towel they used to dry their incessant perspiration, and at dawn they were exhausted and swollen with bites. An English traveler at the beginning of the nineteenth century, referring to the journey by canoe and mule that could last as long as fifty days, had written: “This is one of the most miserable and uncomfortable pilgrimages that a human being can make.” This had no longer been true during the first eighty years of steam navigation, and then it became true again forever when the alligators ate the last butterfly and the maternal manatees were gone, the parrots, the monkeys, the villages were gone: everything was gone.
早在还没当上CFC的董事长之前，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨就多次接到过有关河流状况的警示性报告，但他几乎连看都没有看。他让股东们安心：“诸位别担心，等木柴烧光的时候，就已经有烧油的船了。”对费尔明娜·达萨的激情使他晕头转向，从未为此事操过心，待到发现实情时，已经无计可施，除非能开辟一条新的河流。晚上，即使在河水情况最好的时候，也必须停下船来才能睡觉。此时，单是活着这件事，都变得让人无法忍受。大部分旅客，特别是欧洲人，都走出腐臭的舱室，在甲板上来回踱步以度过漫漫长夜，用毛巾一边擦拭不断渗出的汗水，一边驱赶各种活物。天亮时，他们都精疲力竭，个个被叮咬得鼻青脸肿。十九世纪初，一个英国旅行者在提及某次可能持续了五十天之久的驾独木舟与骑骡相结合的旅行时写道：“这是一个人所能经受的最糟糕、最难耐的长途跋涉。”在蒸汽船开航后的前八十年，情况已得到了极大的改善，但当短吻鳄吞掉了最后一只蝴蝶，母海牛被赶尽杀绝，鹦鹉，长尾猴和村庄销声匿迹，所有都不见了踪影的时候，一切就又回到了老样子，而且将永远持续下去。
For the first three days Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza were protected by the soft springtime of the enclosed observation deck, but when the wood was rationed and the cooling system began to fail, the Presidential Suite became a steam bath. She survived the nights because of the river breeze that came in through the open windows, and she frightened off the mosquitoes with a towel because the insecticide bomb was useless when the boat was anchored. Her earache had become unbearable, and one morning when she awoke it stopped suddenly and completely, like the sound of a smashed cicada. But she did not realize that she had lost the hearing in her left ear until that night, when Florentino Ariza spoke to her on that side and she had to turn her head to hear what he was saying. She did not tell anyone, for she was resigned to the fact that it was one of the many irremediable defects of old age.
旅行的前三天，费尔明娜·达萨和弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨被保护在瞭望台柔和的春光里。但自从木柴定量配给、冷气系统无法运行，总统舱就变成了一只蒸汽咖啡壶。她借着从敞开的窗子吹进来的河风，才得以熬过夜晚的难关，还得不停地用毛巾驱赶蚊子，因为船停泊时，杀虫剂喷筒已毫无用处。耳痛变得无法忍受。可一天早上她醒来时，疼痛突然消失了，就像一只唱破了肚皮的知了，歌声戛然而止。直到晚上，她才发现左耳已失去听觉。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨从左边跟她说话时，她不得不转过头才能听见。她没有告诉任何人，顺从地忍受着，这不过是在年龄带来的那许多无法挽回的缺陷上再加一条罢了。
“There’s no problem,” the Captain laughed. “In a few years, we’ll ride the dry riverbed in luxury automobiles.”
“没关系。”船长笑着说，“几年后我们再来时，将开着豪华汽车跑在干枯的河床上。”
In spite of everything, the delay had been a providential accident for them. Florentino Ariza had once read: “Love becomes greater and nobler in calamity.” The humidity in the Presidential Suite sub merged them in an unreal lethargy in which it was easier to love without questions. They spent unimaginable hours holding hands in the armchairs by the railing, they exchanged unhurried kisses, they enjoyed the rapture of caresses without the pitfalls of impatience. On the third stupefying night she waited for him with a bottle of anisette, which she used to drink in secret with Cousin Hildebranda’s band and later, after she was married and had children, behind closed doors with the friends from her borrowed world. She needed to be somewhat intoxicated in order not to think about her fate with too much lucidity, but Florentino Ariza thought it was to give herself courage for the final step. Encouraged by that illusion, he dared to explore her withered neck with his fingertips, her bosom armored in metal stays, her hips with their decaying bones, her thighs with their aging veins. She accepted with pleasure, her eyes closed, but she did not tremble, and she smoked and drank at regular intervals. At last, when his caresses slid over her belly, she had enough anisette in her heart.
不管怎样，轮船的延误对他们来说是天意的磨难。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨曾读到过这样一句话：“灾难中的爱情更加伟大而高尚。”总统舱里的潮湿使他们沉浸在一种超乎现实的昏睡之中，这种环境更容易使人相爱而互不询问。在难以想象的漫长时间里，他们几小时几小时地坐在栏杆前的靠背椅上，手拉着手，缓慢地亲吻，陶醉于爱抚之中，从不会因失去耐心而扫兴。第三个昏沉的夜晚，她准备了一瓶茴香酒等他到来。她曾同伊尔德布兰达那群表姐妹们一起偷偷喝过这种酒，结婚生子之后，她又和那个本不属于她的世界的女友们一起关起房门来喝过。此刻，她需要让自己糊涂一点，为的是不必太清醒地去思索命运。可弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨却以为，她这样做是为了鼓起勇气迈出最后一步。在这种幻想的驱使下，他大起胆子，用手指肚探索着她那干瘪的脖颈，她那仿佛装着金属骨架的胸部，骨骼已被销蚀的臀部，以及那老母鹿般的大腿。她闭着眼，心满意足地任他抚摸，但并没有颤抖，只是抽着烟，时不时地呷一口酒。最后，当他的爱抚滑至她的小腹时，她的心里已经充满了足够的茴香酒。
“If we’re going to do it, let’s do it,” she said, “but let’s do it like grownups.”
“如果我们一定要干那种见不得人的事，那就干吧。”她说，“不过要像成年人那样。”
She took him to the bedroom and, with the lights on, began to undress without false modesty. Florentino Ariza was on the bed, lying on his back and trying to regain control, once again not knowing what to do with the skin of the tiger he had slain. She said: “Don’t look.” He asked why without taking his eyes off the ceiling.
她把他带到卧室，亮着灯，开始毫不扭捏地脱起衣服来。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨仰躺在床上，努力控制着自己，他又一次在杀死老虎后不知该如何处置虎皮了。她对他说：“你别看。”他问为什么，视线始终没有离开天花板。
Then he looked at her and saw her naked to her waist, just as he had imagined her. Her shoulders were wrinkled, her breasts sagged, her ribs were covered by a flabby skin as pale and cold as a frog’s. She covered her chest with the blouse she had just taken off, and she turned out the light. Then he sat up and began to undress in the darkness, throwing everything at her that he took off, while she tossed it back, dying of laughter.
于是，他瞥了她一眼，看见她赤裸的上身，跟想象中的一模一样。她的肩膀布满皱纹，乳房耷拉着，肋骨被包在一层青蛙皮似的苍白而冰凉的皮肤里。她用刚刚脱下来的衬衫挡在胸前，关掉了灯。这时，他坐起身来，在黑暗中脱下衣服，每脱一件就扔到她身上，而她又把它们扔回去，笑得前仰后合。
“Because you won’t like it,” she said.
“因为你不会喜欢的。”她说。
They lay on their backs for a long time, he more and more perturbed as his intoxication left him, and she peaceful, almost without will, but praying to God that she would not laugh like a fool, as she always did when she overindulged in anisette. They talked to pass the time. They spoke of themselves, of their divergent lives, of the incredible coincidence of their lying naked in a dark cabin on a stranded boat when reason told them they had time only for death. She had never heard of his having a woman, not even one, in that city where everything was known even before it happened. She spoke in a casual manner, and he replied without hesitation in a steady voice:
两人仰面朝天地躺了好一阵子。随着醉意退去，他越来越不知所措。她却很平静，几乎失去了意志力，但她祈求上帝不要让自己无缘无故地笑起来，就像每次喝多了茴香酒时那样。他们交谈着，为的是消磨时间。他们谈起自己，谈起各自不同的生活，谈起这种令人难以置信的偶然性：就在应该去思考时间对他们来说已所剩无几、只能用来等死的时候，他们却赤身裸体地躺在一艘停泊轮船的漆黑舱室里。在他们的城市，一切甚至在发生之前就会尽人皆知，可她却从未听说过他有女人，一次也没有。她以一种随意的方式提及此事，而他立刻做出了回答，声音中没有一丝颤抖：
“I’ve remained a virgin for you.”
“那是因为我为你保留了童贞。”
She would not have believed it in any event, even if it had been true, because his love letters were composed of similar phrases whose meaning mattered less than their brilliance. But she liked the spirited way in which he said it. Florentino Ariza, for his part, suddenly asked himself what he would never have dared to ask himself before: what kind of secret life had she led outside of her marriage? Nothing would have surprised him, because he knew that women are just like men in their secret adventures: the same stratagems, the same sudden inspirations, the same betrayals without remorse. But he was wise not to ask the question. Once, when her relations with the Church were already strained, her confessor had asked her out of the blue if she had ever been unfaithful to her husband, and she had stood up without responding, without concluding, without saying goodbye, and had never gone to confession again, with that confessor or with any other. But Florentino Ariza’s prudence had an unexpected reward: she stretched out her hand in the darkness, caressed his belly, his flanks, his almost hairless pubis. She said: “You have skin like a baby’s.” Then she took the final step: she searched for him where he was not, she searched again without hope, and she found him, unarmed.
即便这是真的，她也无论如何都不会相信。因为他写的那些情书里也尽是一些这样的句子，其价值并不在于它们准确的含义，而在于那种令人头晕目眩的力量。但她喜欢他说这话时的勇气。而此时，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨却突然问了自己一个从未敢问过的问题：她在婚姻之外，还有过怎样不为人知的生活。无论答案是什么，都不会让他感到惊奇，因为他知道，在秘密冒险这方面，女人和男人一样：同样的狡诈伎俩，同样的心血来潮，同样的没有丝毫愧疚的背叛。但他没有张口问她，这是对的。曾经，在她和教会的关系相当不愉快的那段时期，忏悔神甫竟出其不意地问她是否对丈夫有过不忠。她直接站了起来，没有回答，没有做完忏悔，甚至没有向神甫告别。此后，她再也没有做过忏悔，无论是向这位神甫，还是向其他任何一位神甫。此刻，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的谨慎给他带来了意想不到的回报：她在黑暗中伸出手去，抚摸着他的小腹，他身体的两侧，以及他那几乎已经没有毛发的耻骨。她说：“你的皮肤就像婴儿一样。”接着，她迈出了最后一步：她寻找着它，发现它并不在那里，她继续无望地找着，终于找到了那个手无寸铁的东西。
It had happened to him sometimes, and he had learned to live with the phantom: each time he had to learn again, as if it were the first time. He took her hand and laid it on his chest: Fermina Daza felt the old, untiring heart almost bursting through his skin, beating with the strength, the rapidity, the irregularity of an adolescent’s. He said: “Too much love is as bad for this as no love at all.” But he said it without conviction: he was ashamed, furious with himself, longing for some reason to blame her for his failure. She knew it, and began to provoke his defenseless body with mock caresses, like a kitten delighting in cruelty, until he could no longer endure the martyrdom and he returned to his cabin. She thought about him until dawn, convinced at last of her love, and as the anisette left her in slow waves, she was invaded by the anguished fear that he was angry and would never return.
这种事在他身上常常发生，他已学会了和这个幽灵共处：只是每一次他都像第一次似的，要重新去学习面对之法。他拿起她的手，把它放在自己的胸口上：费尔明娜·达萨几乎能清清楚楚地感受到他那颗不知疲倦的老人之心正以年轻人的力量、速度和慌乱跳动着。他说：“过多的爱和过少的爱都对它有害。”但他说这话时并没有信心，事实上，他羞愧难当，正和自己怄气，渴望找个理由把失败归咎于她。她看出了这一点，开始用嘲弄似的爱抚挑逗这个毫无自卫能力的身体，就像一只残忍地幸灾乐祸的温柔小猫。终于，他无法再忍受这种折磨，起身回自己的舱室去了。她一直想着他，直到天亮，终于确认了自己对他的爱。随着茴香酒带来的醉意散去，她独自漂浮在缓慢的海浪中，忧郁渐渐袭上心头，她担心他生她的气，不会再来了。
But he returned the same day, refreshed and renewed, at the unusual hour of eleven o’clock, and he undressed in front of her with a certain ostentation. She was pleased to see him in the light just as she had imagined him in the darkness: an ageless man, with dark skin that was as shiny and tight as an opened umbrella, with no hair except for a few limp strands under his arms and at his groin. His guard was up, and she realized that he did not expose his weapon by accident, but displayed it as if it were a war trophy in order to give himself courage. He did not even give her time to take off the nightgown that she had put on when the dawn breeze began to blow, and his beginner’s haste made her shiver with compassion. But that did not disturb her, because in such cases it was not easy to distinguish between compassion and love. When it was over, however, she felt empty.
然而，他当天就来了，在上午十一点这个不同寻常的时间，还容光焕发，精神抖擞。他带着某种炫耀的神情，当着她的面脱光了衣服。在光天化日之下，她高兴地看到他和自己在黑暗之中想象的一模一样：一个没有年龄的男人，皮肤很黑，像撑开的伞一样光亮、紧绷，除了腋下和耻骨处几根稀疏而平直的毛发，浑身再无其他茸毛。他的侍卫昂首挺立，她发现他并非偶然让她看见他的武器，而是像炫耀战利品一样有意地展示，以鼓舞自己的士气。他甚至没给她时间脱掉她在清晨吹起微风时穿上的睡衣，这种新手般的仓促慌乱使她因感到同情而浑身一颤。但这并没有令她不快，因为在这种情况下，她很难分清自己是出于同情还是爱情。然而，做完之后，她却感到心里空荡荡的。
“It’s dead,” he said.
“它死了。”他说。
It was the first time she had made love in over twenty years, and she had been held back by her curiosity concerning how it would feel at her age after so long a respite. But he had not given her time to find out if her body loved him too. It had been hurried and sad, and she thought: Now we’ve screwed up everything. But she was wrong: despite the disappointment that each of them felt, despite his regret for his clumsiness and her remorse for the madness of the anisette, they were not apart for a moment in the days that followed. Captain Samaritano, who uncovered by instinct any secret that anyone wanted to keep on his ship, sent them a white rose every morning, had them serenaded with old waltzes from their day, had meals prepared for them with aphrodisiac ingredients as a joke. They did not try to make love again until much later, when the inspiration came to them without their looking for it. They were satisfied with the simple joy of being together.
这是她二十多年来第一次做·爱。整个过程中，她因为好奇而恍惚出神，体会着停歇了这么久之后，又在这样一个年龄，再做这件事究竟是一种什么样的感受。但他没有给她足够的时间，让她想清楚自己的身体是否也同样爱他。一切迅速而可悲。她想：“现在可好，我们把事情搞砸了。”但她错了。尽管他们都有些失望，尽管他为自己的笨拙而后悔，尽管她因茴香酒带来的疯狂而内疚，在余下的日子里，他们却片刻也没有再分开过，甚至连吃饭都几乎没再走出过舱室。萨马利塔诺船长凭借着本能，向来能够洞悉他的船上任何一个试图隐藏的秘密。他每天早上派人给他们送来白玫瑰，夜晚为他们演奏他们那个时代的华尔兹小夜曲，还打趣似的吩咐厨师为他们准备添加了催情佐料的食物。此后很久，他们才又一次尝试了做爱——等到灵感自然而然地找上门来，而非他们刻意去寻找灵感。能够待在一起，这种简单的幸福对他们来说就已经足够。
They would not have thought of leaving the cabin if the Captain had not written them a note informing them that after lunch they would reach golden La Dorada, the last port on the eleven-day journey. From the cabin Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza saw the promontory of houses lit by a pale sun, and they thought they understood the reason for its name, but it seemed less evident to them when they felt the heat that steamed like a caldron and saw the tar bubbling in the streets. Moreover, the boat did not dock there but on the opposite bank, where the terminal for the Santa Fe Railroad was located.
他们从未想过要走出舱室，直到船长用一张纸条通知他们，经过十一天的航行，船在午餐后就将到达此行的最后一个港口：黄金港。费尔明娜·达萨和弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨从舱室中看见，山冈上的房子在苍白的阳光下闪闪发光，便自以为理解了港口名字的由来，但当他们感到空气蒸得像在锅炉里一样，看见街道上的沥青都已沸腾时，又觉得那个名字没那么贴切了。他们的船并没有停靠在港口这边，而是停到了对岸，那里是开往圣菲的火车的起点站。
In the middle of the bustling market, a very old man with an inconsolable expression on his face was pulling chicks out of the pockets of his beggar’s coat. He had appeared without warning, making his way through the crowd in a tattered overcoat that had belonged to someone much taller and heavier than he. He took off his hat, placed it brim up on the dock in case anyone wanted to throw him a coin, and began to empty his pockets of handfuls of pale baby chicks that seemed to proliferate in his fingers. In only a moment the dock appeared to be carpeted with cheeping chicks running everywhere among hurried travelers who trampled them without realizing it. Fascinated by the marvelous spectacle that seemed to be performed in her honor, for she was the only person watching it, Fermina Daza did not notice when the passengers for the return trip began to come on board. The party was over: among them she saw many faces she knew, some of them friends who until a short while ago had attended her in her grief, and she rushed to take refuge in her cabin. Florentino Ariza found her there, distraught: she would rather die than be seen on a pleasure trip, by people she knew, so soon after the death of her husband. Her preoccupation affected Florentino Ariza so much that he promised to think of some way to protect her other than keeping her in the cabin.
在喧闹的市场中，一位看上去很可怜的老人正从乞丐外衣的各个口袋里掏出一只只小鸡来。他是突然从人群中挤出来的，身上那件破烂不堪的大衣显然曾属于一个比他魁梧得多的人。他摘下帽子，口朝上放到码头上，看看是否有人愿意往里面扔一枚硬币。接着，他从各个口袋里掏出一只一只稚嫩的、几乎没有颜色的小鸡来，仿佛是从他的指间繁殖出来的。一时间，码头上像铺了一层小鸡地毯，它们惊慌失措地啾啾叫着，到处乱跑，有些匆忙的旅客把它们踩在脚下都全然不知。费尔明娜·达萨被眼前神奇的景象迷住了，她觉得这仿佛是在欢迎她的到来，因为只有她看到了这一切。她看得出神，甚至没有注意到返程的旅客是何时开始上船的。她的节日狂欢结束了：在陆续登船的人中，她看到了许多熟悉的面孔，其中一些是她的朋友，前不久还曾在服丧期间陪伴过她。她仓皇地躲回舱室。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨发现她万分沮丧：她宁愿死，也不愿被那个圈子中的人发现她在丈夫刚去世不久就愉快地出门旅行。她的垂头丧气让弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨心疼不已，他发誓要想出办法来保护她，而不是让她像坐牢似的待在舱室里。
They left their refuge as soon as the passengers disembarked. Fermina Daza breathed the good air of impunity in the empty salon, and from the gunwale they both watched a noisy crowd of people gathering their luggage in the cars of a train that looked like a toy.
旅客们一下船，他们就离开了自己的避难所。费尔明娜·达萨在空荡荡的大厅里呼吸着未受污染的新鲜空气。两人从船舷上望向一群喧嚷躁动的游客，他们正在一列玩具一样的火车车厢里寻找自己的行李。
One would have thought they had come from Europe, above all the women, in their Nordic coats and hats from the last century that made no sense in the sweltering, dusty heat. Some wore beautiful potato blossoms in their hair, but they had begun to wither in the heat. They had just come from the Andean plateau after a train trip through a dreamlike savannah, and they had not had time to change their clothes for the Caribbean.
他们很可能来自欧洲，尤其是那些女人，她们身上罩着的北欧式的大衣和上世纪的帽子同这里尘土飞扬的夏日气候格格不入。一些女人的头发上还装饰着的美丽的土豆花，已经开始在炎热中枯萎。他们坐了一天的火车，穿过梦幻般的大草原，刚刚从安第斯平原来到这里，还没来得及换上适合加勒比的衣服。
“And speaking hypothetically,” he said, “would it be possible to make a trip without stopping, without cargo or passengers, without coming into any port, without anything?”
“我们来假设一下，”他说，“有没有可能做一次直航，既不载货，也不运送旅客，不在任何港口停靠，总之就是，途中什么都不做？”
The idea came to him all at once as they were having supper in the private dining room. The Captain was troubled by a problem he had wanted to discuss for a long time with Florentino Ariza, who always evaded him with his usual answer: “Leona Cassiani can handle those problems better than I can.” This time, however, he listened to him. The fact was that the boats carried cargo upriver, but came back empty, while the opposite occurred with passengers. “And the advantage of cargo is that it pays more and eats nothing,” he said. Fermina Daza, bored with the men’s enervated discussion concerning the possibility of establishing differential fares, ate without will. But Florentino Ariza pursued the discussion to its end, and only then did he ask the question that the Captain thought was the prelude to a solution:
当他们在私人餐厅用晚餐时，他突然想出了主意。船长一直在为某个问题烦恼，好久以前就想跟弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨讨论一下，但阿里萨总是以他那一贯的理由避而不谈：“这些琐事，莱昂娜·卡西亚尼比我处理得更好。”然而，这一次他仔细听了船长的话。事情是这样的，船上行时载着货物，回程却是空的，而载客情况却正好相反。“载货是有利的，付的钱多，而且货物还不用吃饭。”他说。费尔明娜·达萨的这顿晚餐吃得索然无味，两个男人就设立不同票价制度的好处进行的冗长讨论让她感到无聊。但弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨坚持到最后，才提出了一个在船长看来可能是拯救方案之前奏的问题：
The Captain said that it was possible, but only hypothetically. The R. C. C. had business commitments that Florentino Ariza was more familiar with than he was, it had contracts for cargo, passengers, mail, and a great deal more, and most of them were unbreakable. The only thing that would allow them to bypass all that was a case of cholera on board. The ship would be quarantined, it would hoist the yellow flag and sail in a state of emergency. Captain Samaritano had needed to do just that on several occasions because of the many cases of cholera along the river, although later the health authorities had obliged the doctors to sign death certificates that called the cases common dysentery. Besides, many times in the history of the river the yellow plague flag had been flown in order to evade taxes, or to avoid picking up an undesirable passenger, or to elude inopportune inspections. Florentino Ariza reached for Fermina Daza’s hand under the table.
船长说，这只在假设中成立。CFC有各种劳务协议，这一点弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨比谁都清楚，关于载货、载客、邮件运输以及其他很多项义务都签有合同，其中大部分是不能推卸的。唯有一种情况可以跳过一切条款，那就是船上发生瘟疫。轮船宣布进入隔离检疫，升起黄旗，在紧急状态下航行。由于沿河出现过很多次霍乱，萨马利塔诺船长曾有好几次不得不这样做，尽管后来卫生部门强迫医生签署了死者死于普通痢疾的证明。此外，在这条河流的历史上，很多时候轮船升起代表瘟疫的黄旗是为了逃避税收，或是不愿搭载某个乘客，又或是躲避不合时宜的检查。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨在桌下找到了费尔明娜·达萨的手。
Florentino Ariza was serious, of course, and he signed the order. After all, everyone knew that the time of cholera had not ended despite all the joyful statistics from the health officials. As for the ship, there was no problem. The little cargo they had taken on was transferred, they told the passengers there had been a mechanical failure, and early that morning they sent them on their way on a ship that belonged to another company. If such things were done for so many immoral, even contemptible reasons, Florentino Ariza could not see why it would not be legitimate to do them for love. All that the Captain asked was that they stop in Puerto Nare to pick up someone who would accompany him on the voyage: he, too, had his secret heart.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨当然是认真的。他签署了命令。不管怎么说，谁都知道，尽管卫生部门对形势估计乐观，但霍乱时期远未结束。至于船本身，并不是问题。已经装船的货物本就不多，它们被转移到了别的船上，旅客则被告知轮船的机器出了故障，当天清晨已被安排搭乘其他公司的一艘轮船。如果说这样做的理由并不道德，甚至有些令人不齿，但在弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨看来，既然都是为了爱，那么也就没有什么不合理不合法的。船长唯一的请求是在纳雷港停一下，把一个陪他旅行的人接上船来：他也有自己隐秘的心思。
“Well, then,” he said, “let’s do that.”
“那么好，”他说，“我们就这么办。”
The Captain was taken by surprise, but then, with the instinct of an old fox, he saw everything clearly.
船长大吃一惊，但很快，他就凭着自己老狐狸的本能洞察了一切。
“I command on this ship, but you command us,” he said. “So if you are serious, give me the order in writing and we will leave right now.”
“我指挥这条船，而您指挥我们所有人。”他说，“因此，如果您是认真的，就请给我一份书面命令，我们马上开船。”
So the New Fidelity weighed anchor at dawn the next day, without cargo or passengers, and with the yellow cholera flag waving jubilantly from the mainmast. At dusk in Puerto Nare they picked up a woman who was even taller and stouter than the Captain, an uncommon beauty who needed only a beard to be hired by a circus. Her name was Zenaida Neves, but the Captain called her “my wild woman”: an old friend whom he would pick up in one port and leave in another, and who came on board followed by the winds of joy. In that sad place of death, where Florentino Ariza relived his memories of Rosalba when he saw the train from Envigado struggling to climb the old mule trail, there was an Amazonian downpour that would continue with very few pauses for the rest of the trip. But no one cared: the floating fiesta had its own roof. That night, as a personal contribution to the revelry, Fermina Daza went down to the galley amid the ovations of the crew and prepared a dish for everyone that she created and that Florentino Ariza christened Eggplant al Amor.
于是，“新忠诚号”在第二天天蒙蒙亮时就起锚了。没有货物，也没有旅客，主桅杆上一面标志着霍乱的黄旗欢快地飘荡。傍晚时，他们在纳雷港把一个比船长还要高大结实的女人接上了船。她的美与众不同，只差一把胡子就可以被马戏团聘用了。她叫塞娜依达·内维斯，可船长却称呼她“我的魔女”。她是船长的老情人，他常常把她从一个港口接上船，再在另一个港口放下，而且每次她一登船，便会带来一股幸福的劲风。在这个令人伤心的死亡之地，看着恩维加多的火车在昔日骡子走过的飞檐般的峭壁上吃力爬行，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的心中不由泛起对罗萨尔芭的思念。正在此时，亚马逊的暴雨倾盆而下，在余下的旅途中几乎没有停歇过。但谁都没有在意：旅行中的狂欢自有其避风挡雨的屋檐。那天晚上，作为个人对狂欢的贡献，费尔明娜·达萨在船员们的欢呼声中下了厨房，为大家做了一道她自创的菜肴，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨将其命名为“爱情茄子”。
Fermina Daza was horrified when she heard the boat’s horn with her good ear, but by the second day of anisette she could hear better with both of them. She discovered that roses were more fragrant than before, that the birds sang at dawn much better than before, and that God had created a manatee and placed it on the bank at Tamalameque just so it could awaken her. The Captain heard it, had the boat change course, and at last they saw the enormous matron nursing the baby that she held in her arms. Neither Florentino nor Fermina was aware of how well they understood each other: she helped him to take his enemas, she got up before he did to brush the false teeth he kept in a glass while he slept, and she solved the problem of her misplaced spectacles, for she could use his for reading and mending. When she awoke one morning, she saw him sewing a button on his shirt in the darkness, and she hurried to do it for him before he could say the ritual phrase about needing two wives. On the other hand, the only thing she needed from him was that he cup a pain in her back.
当费尔明娜·达萨那只好使的耳朵又听到轮船的汽笛声时，她吓了一跳，但在畅饮茴香酒的第二天，她的两只耳朵就都听得比以往更清楚了。她发现玫瑰花比从前更香，鸟儿黎明时的歌声也更动听了。她还发现，上帝又造了一头海牛，把它放到了塔玛拉梅克的河滩上，目的就是把她唤醒。船长也听到了海牛的叫声，命令改变航向。于是，他们看见了这个体形巨大、刚刚分娩的母亲，它正把幼子抱在怀中喂奶。无论是弗洛伦蒂诺还是费尔明娜，都没有注意到他们彼此间是多么情投意合：她帮他灌肠，在他之前起床为他刷净他睡觉前放在杯中的假牙；她总找不着眼镜的问题也解决了，因为她看书和缝补时可以戴上他的眼镜。一天早上她醒来，见他正在昏暗中钉衬衫上的纽扣。在他说出那句“男人需要两个妻子”的仪式性话语之前，她赶忙把活儿抢到自己手中。而她唯一需要他做的，只是给她拔火罐消除背痛。
During the day they played cards, ate until they were bursting, took gritty siestas that left them exhausted, and as soon as the sun was down the orchestra began to play, and they had anisette with salmon until they could eat and drink no more. It was a rapid journey: the boat was light and the currents favorable and even improved by the floods that rushed down from the headwaters, where it rained as much that week as it had during the entire voyage. Some villages fired charitable cannons for them to frighten away the cholera, and they expressed their gratitude with a mournful bellow. The ships they passed on the way, regardless of the company they belonged to, signaled their condolences. In the town of Magangué, where Mercedes was born, they took on enough wood for the rest of the trip.
白天，他们玩牌，吃到肚皮要爆炸，午觉也睡得酣畅淋漓，以至于醒来时精疲力尽。太阳刚一下山，乐队便开始演奏，他们饮茴香酒吃鲑鱼，直到餍足还不罢休。这是一次快速旅行，船轻水顺：那个星期乃及整个旅途中都在下雨，上游涨起的水滚滚而下，改善了河流的状况。一些村镇怀着同情为他们鸣炮驱赶霍乱，他们则用汽笛的哀鸣表示谢意。途中，无论哪家公司的船与他们相遇，都向他们发出致哀的信号。在马冈盖镇，梅塞德斯出生的地方，他们备足了余下旅程所需的所有木柴。
The night before their arrival they had a grand party with paper garlands and colored lights. The weather cleared at nightfall. Holding each other very close, the Captain and Zenaida danced the first boleros that were just beginning to break hearts in those days. Florentino Ariza dared to suggest to Fermina Daza that they dance their private waltz, but she refused. Nevertheless she kept time with her head and her heels all night, and there was even a moment when she danced sitting down without realizing it, while the Captain merged with his young wild woman in the shadows of the bolero. She drank so much anisette that she had to be helped up the stairs, and she suffered an attack of laughing until she cried, which alarmed everyone. However, when at last she recovered her self-possession in the perfumed oasis of her cabin, they made the tranquil, wholesome love of experienced grandparents, which she would keep as her best memory of that lunatic voyage. Contrary to what the Captain and Zenaida supposed, they no longer felt like newlyweds, and even less like belated lovers. It was as if they had leapt over the arduous calvary of conjugal life and gone straight to the heart of love. They were together in silence like an old married couple wary of life, beyond the pitfalls of passion, beyond the brutal mockery of hope and the phantoms of disillusion: beyond love. For they had lived together long enough to know that lo ve was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death.
到港的前一天晚上，他们举行了一场盛大的晚会，四处挂起纸花环和彩灯。黄昏时，雨停了。船长和塞娜依达搂得紧紧地跳了几曲波莱罗舞，在那年月，这种舞正开始迷醉人心。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨大着胆子向费尔明娜·达萨提议，他们也伴着那首只属于两人的华尔兹跳上一曲，但她拒绝了。不过整个晚上，她都在用脑袋和鞋跟打着拍子，甚至有那么片刻，当船长和他那温柔的魔女在昏暗中如胶似漆地跳着波莱罗时，她竟不知不觉地在椅子上舞动起来。她喝了那么多茴香酒，以至于最后大家不得不扶着她走上楼梯。她突然一边哭一边笑起来，让所有人都慌了手脚。但在舱室里那凝滞的香气中，她最终控制住了自己。他们平静而健康地做了爱。这是满脸皱纹的祖父祖母之间的爱，它将作为这次疯狂旅行中最美好的回忆，铭刻在两个人的记忆之中。同船长和塞娜依达猜想的不同，他们之间的感觉并不像新婚燕尔的夫妇，更不像相聚恨晚的情人。他们仿佛一举越过了漫长艰辛的夫妻生活，义无反顾地直达爱情的核心。他们像一对经历了生活磨炼的老夫老妻，在宁静中超越了激情的陷阱，超越了幻想的无情嘲弄和醒悟的海市蜃楼：超越了爱情。因为他们已在一起生活了足够长时间，足以发现无论何时何地，爱情始终都是爱情，只不过距离死亡越近，爱就越浓郁。
Florentino Ariza, for his part, began to revive old memories with a violin borrowed from the orchestra, and in half a day he could play the waltz of “The Crowned Goddess” for her, and he played it for hours until they forced him to stop. One night, for the first time in her life, Fermina Daza suddenly awoke choking on tears of sorrow, not of rage, at the memory of the old couple in the boat beaten to death by the boatman. On the other hand, the incessant rain did not affect her, and she thought too late that perhaps Paris was not as gloomy as it had seemed, that Santa Fe did not have so many funerals passing along the streets. The dream of other voyages with Florentino Ariza appeared on the horizon: mad voyages, free of trunks, free of social commitments: voyages of love.
至于弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨，则开始用乐队的小提琴来抒发旧情。只练了半天，他便能为她演奏“花冠女神”的华尔兹。他几小时不间断地拉着这首曲子，直到大家不得不强迫他停下来。一天夜里，费尔明娜·达萨平生第一次在痛苦而非愤怒的哭泣中因窒息醒来，由于她又想起了那两个在船上被桨活活打死的老人。一直下个不停的雨反倒没有在她心中激起波澜，她为时已晚地想着，或许巴黎并不像自己感觉的那样阴郁，圣菲的街道上或许也并没有那么多葬礼。未来再同弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨一起出游的梦想在天边浮现：那将是一次又一次疯狂的旅行，不带箱子，没有应酬：纯粹的爱之旅。
Florentino Ariza was startled, because her words read a thought that had given him no peace since the beginning of the voyage home. Neither one could imagine being in any other home but the cabin, or eating in any other way but on the ship, or living any other life, for that would be alien to them forever. It was, indeed, like dying. He could not go back to sleep. He lay on his back in bed, his hands crossed behind his head. At a certain moment, the pangs of grief for América Vicuña made him twist with pain, and he could not hold off the truth any longer: he locked himself in the bathroom and cried, slowly, until his last tear was shed. Only then did he have the courage to admit to himself how much he had loved her.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨吃了一惊，因为她的话道破了自返程起就时刻折磨着他的一个想法。无论他还是她，都无法想象自己在舱室以外的另一个家里，吃着与船上不同的饭菜，投身到一种对他们来说将永远陌生的生活中去——那真的像死一样。他再也睡不着，仰面躺在床上，双手交叉枕在脑后。片刻之后，对阿美利加·维库尼亚的回忆刺痛了他，他蜷起身子，再也无法逃避真相。于是，他把自己关在卫生间里，痛痛快快、从容不迫地大哭了一场，直至哭尽最后一滴眼泪。也只有在这时，他才有勇气向自己承认他曾多么爱她。
“It is going to be like dying,” she said.
“这就像要死了一样。”她说。
They awoke at six o’clock. She had a headache scented with anisette, and her heart was stunned by the impression that Dr. Juvenal Urbino had come back, plumper and younger than when he had fallen from the tree, and that he was sitting in his rocking chair, waiting for her at the door of their house. She was, however, lucid enough to realize that this was the result not of the anisette but of her imminent return.
六点钟，他们醒了。她的头因昨晚的茴香酒还剧烈地疼着，而且心慌意乱，因为她仿佛觉得胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生回来了，比从树上摔下去时更胖了一些，也更年轻了，正坐在家门口的摇椅上等着她。然而，她很清醒地意识到，这并非茴香酒产生的作用，而是对马上就要到家的恐惧。
They found the Captain in the dining room, in a disheveled condition that did not accord with his habitual neatness: he was unshaven, his eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, his clothing was still sweaty from the previous night, his speech was interrupted by belches of anisette. Zenaida was asleep. They were beginning to eat their breakfast in silence, when a motor launch from the Health Department ordered them to stop the ship.
他们在餐厅里找到了船长。他那副狼狈的样子与平日里的干净利落判若两人：胡子没刮，双眼因失眠而布满血丝，衣服上还浸着昨晚的汗水，说话颠三倒四，不时地打着茴香酒嗝。塞娜依达还在睡着。当他们开始默默地吃早餐时，港口卫生局的汽油快艇命令他们把船停下来。
The Captain, standing on the bridge, shouted his answers to the questions put to him by the armed patrol. They wanted to know what kind of pestilence they carried on board, how many passengers there were, how many of them were sick, what possibility there was for new infections. The Captain replied that they had only three passengers on board and all of them had cholera, but they were being kept in strict seclusion. Those who were to come on board in La Dorada, and the twenty-seven men of the crew, had not had any contact with the m. But the commander of the patrol was not satisfied, and he ordered them to leave the bay and wait in Las Mercedes Marsh until two o’clock in the afternoon, while the forms were prepared for placing the ship in quarantine. The Captain let loose with a wagon driver’s fart, and with a wave of his hand he ordered the pilot to turn around and go back to the marshes.
船长从指挥台上大声叫嚷着回答了武装巡逻队的问话。他们想知道船上染的是什么瘟疫，有多少旅客，又有多少病人，传染的可能性有多大。船长回答说，只有三名旅客，得的全是霍乱，但一直处于严格的隔离之中。无论是那些本应在黄金港上船的旅客，还是二十七名船员，都没和他们有过任何接触。但巡逻队队长并不满意这个回答，命令他们离开海湾，在为船办理隔离手续期间，他们要在拉斯·梅塞德斯沼泽等候到下午两点。船长狠狠地咒骂了一句，做了个手势，命令领航员掉头回沼泽去。
When they went up, already dressed for going ashore, the ship had left behind the narrow channels and marshes of the old Spanish passage and was navigating around the wrecks of boats and the platforms of oil wells in the bay. A radiant Thursday was breaking over the golden domes of the city of the Viceroys, but Fermina Daza, standing at the railing, could not bear the pestilential stink of its glories, the arrogance of its bulwarks profaned by iguanas: the horror of real life. They did not say anything, but neither one felt capable of capitulating so easily.
当他们起床穿好衣服准备下船时，轮船已把昔日西班牙人关口的狭窄水道和沼泽抛到身后，行驶在海湾破旧的船骸和废弃的油罐之间。一个灿烂的星期四从这座总督之城的金色穹顶上徐徐升起。然而，站在栏杆前的费尔明娜·达萨已无法忍受它那腐臭的荣耀，以及那些早已被鬣蜥亵渎的城堡的高傲：可怕的现实生活。两人都没有说话，但无论他，还是她，都感到自己无法如此轻易地屈服投降。
Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza had heard everything from their table, but that did not seem to matter to the Captain. He continued to eat in silence, and his bad humor was evident in the manner in which he breached the rules of etiquette that sustained the legendary reputation of the riverboat captains. He broke apart his four fried eggs with the tip of his knife, and he ate them with slices of green plantain, which he placed whole in his mouth and chewed with savage delight. Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza looked at him without speaking, as if waiting on a school bench to hear their final grades. They had not exchanged a word during his conversation with the health patrol, nor did they have the slightest idea of what would become of their lives, but they both knew that the Captain was thinking for them: they could see it in the throbbing of his temples.
费尔明娜·达萨和弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨在餐桌前听到了这一切，船长却好像满不在乎。他继续默不作声地吃着饭，糟糕的心情一目了然，已顾不上保持内河船长在礼仪和修养方面一贯的好名声。他用刀尖剖开盘子里的四只煎鸡蛋，把它们同整块整块的油炸青香蕉卷在一起塞进嘴里，带着野蛮的喜悦大嚼起来。费尔明娜·达萨和弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨一言不发地看着他，就像坐在学校板凳上等待宣读期末考试成绩的学生。在船长和卫生局的武装巡逻队对话时，他们彼此一句话也没有说，今后的生活会变成什么样，他们心中一点主意也没有。但两个人都清楚，船长正在为他们打算：从他太阳穴的跳动就可以看出。
While he finished off his portion of eggs, the tray of fried plantains, and the pot of café con leche, the ship left the bay with its boilers quiet, made its way along the channels through blankets of taruya, the river lotus with purple blossoms and large heart-shaped leaves, and returned to the marshes. The water was iridescent with the universe of fishes floating on their sides, killed by the dynamite of stealthy fishermen, and all the birds of the earth and the water circled above them with metallic cries. The wind from the Caribbean blew in the windows along with the racket made by the birds, and Fermina Daza felt in her blood the wild beating of her free will. To her right, the muddy, frugal estuary of the Great Magdalena River spread out to the other side of the world.
就在船长打发掉那盘煎鸡蛋和油炸香蕉块，喝光一罐牛奶咖啡时，轮船带着安安静静的锅炉，驶出了海港，穿过狭窄的水道，在一层厚厚的凤眼莲、深紫色的莲花和心形的大荷叶中间开出一条路来，返回沼泽地去了。水面上闪着银光，到处都漂浮着横陈的死鱼，全是被偷偷捕鱼的渔民用炸药炸死的。陆地和水上的鸟儿在它们的上空盘旋，发出金属般剌耳的叫声。加勒比的海风伴随着鸟儿的喧闹从窗户飘了进来。费尔明娜·达萨感到自己血液中的自由意志一阵沸腾。右边，马格达莱纳大河潮淹区的河水，浑浊而缓慢地向世界的另一边延伸。
Florentino Ariza listened to him without blinking. Then he looked through the windows at the complete circle of the quadrant on the mariner’s compass, the clear horizon, the December sky without a single cloud, the waters that could be navigated forever, and he said:
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨眼睛都不眨一下地听他说完。然后，他透过窗子看了看航海罗盘上那一整圈刻度表，又望了望清晰的地平线，望了望十二月万里无云的天空和可以永远航行下去的一望无际的水面，说：
When there was nothing left to eat on the plates, the Captain wiped his lips with a corner of the tablecloth and broke into indecent slang that ended once and for all the reputation for fine speech enjoyed by the riverboat captains. For he was not speaking to them or to anyone else, but was trying instead to come to terms with his own rage. His conclusion, after a string of barbaric curses, was that he could find no way out of the mess he had gotten into with the cholera flag.
当盘子里再没有东西可吃时，船长用桌布的一角抹了抹嘴，放肆无礼地大骂了一通黑话，彻底毁掉了内河船长言行文雅的美誉。他不是冲他们，也不是冲着任何人说的，只是想要发泄心中的怒火。在一连串粗鲁的咒骂之后，他的结论是他实在不知道如何才能走出霍乱黄旗带来的困境。
“Let us keep going, going, going, back to La Dorada.”
“我们走，一直走，一直走，重回黄金港！”
Fermina Daza shuddered because she recognized his former voice, illuminated by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and she looked at the Captain: he was their destiny. But the Captain did not see her because he was stupefied by Florentino Ariza’s tremendous powers of inspiration.
费尔明娜·达萨浑身一震，因为她听出了昔日那个被圣神恩典照亮的声音。她看了看船长：他是他们命运的主宰者。但船长没有看她，他被弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨那灵感的巨大力量震慑住了。
The Captain looked at Fermina Daza and saw on her eyelashes the first glimmer of wintry frost. Then he looked at Florentino Ariza, his invincible power, his intrepid love, and he was overwhelmed by the belated suspicion that it is life, more than death, that has no limits.
船长看了看费尔明娜·达萨，在她睫毛上看到初霜的闪光。然后，他又看了看弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨，看到的是他那不可战胜的决心和勇敢无畏的爱。这份迟来的顿悟使他吓了一跳，原来是生命，而非死亡，才是没有止境的。
“And how long do you think we can keep up this goddamn coming and going?” he asked.
“见鬼，那您认为我们这样来来回回的究竟走到什么时候？”他问。
Florentino Ariza had kept his answer ready for fifty-three years, seven months, and eleven days and nights.
在五十三年七个月零十一天以来的日日夜夜，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨一直都准备好了答案。
“Do you mean what you say?” he asked.
“您此话当真？”他问他道。
“From the moment I was born,” said Florentino Ariza, “I have never said anything I did not mean.”
“从我出生起，”弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨说，“就没说过一件不当真的事。”
“Forever,” he said.
“一生一世。”他说。
(THE END)
（全书完）
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