The day that Florentino Ariza saw Fermina Daza in the atrium of the Cathedral, in the sixth month of her pregnancy and in full command of her new condition as a woman of the world, he made a fierce decision to win fame and fortune in order to deserve her. He did not even stop to think about the obstacle of her being married, because at the same time he decided, as if it depended on himself alone, that Dr. Juvenal Urbino had to die. He did not know when or how, but he considered it an ineluctable event that he was resolved to wait for without impatience or violence, even till the end of time.
那天，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨在大教堂前见到怀有六个月身孕、对自己的新角色驾驭得八面玲珑的费尔明娜·达萨，便下定了狠心，要赢得名誉和财富以配得上她。他甚至没去考虑她已是有夫之妇这个障碍，因为他同时认定，胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生是会死的，就好像这件事取决于他似的。他不知道将在什么时候，也不知道会如何发生，但他把它当作一件势不可挡的事。他决心既不着急也不躁动地等下去，即便等到世界末日。
He began at the beginning. He presented himself unannounced in the office of Uncle Leo XII, President of the Board of Directors and General Manager of the River Company of the Caribbean, and expressed his willingness to yield to his plans. His uncle was angry with him because of the manner in which he had thrown away the good position of telegraph operator in Villa de Leyva, but he allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves. Besides, his brother’s widow had died the year before, still smarting from rancor but without any heirs. And so he gave the job to his errant nephew.
他从头做起，没有事先通知便来到加勒比河运公司董事长兼总经理莱昂十二的办公室，表示愿意听从他的差遣。叔叔仍在为他白白浪费了维拉·德雷伊瓦那份电报员的好差事而不悦，但还是情愿相信他的说辞——人不是从娘胎里出来就一成不变的，相反，生活会逼迫他一次又一次地脱胎换骨。再者，哥哥的遗孀已在前一年带着刻骨的仇恨死去了，没有留下一个继承人。于是，他给了这个流浪的侄子一份差事。
It was a decision typical of Don Leo XII Loayza. Inside the shell of a soulless merchant was hidden a genial lunatic, as willing to bring forth a spring of lemonade in the Guajira Desert as to flood a solemn funeral with weeping at his heartbreaking rendition of “In Questa Tomba Oscura.” His head was covered with curls, he had the lips of a faun, and all he needed was a lyre and a laurel wreath to be the image of the incendiary Nero of Christian mythology. When he was not occupied with the administration of his decrepit vessels, still afloat out of sheer distraction on the part of fate, or with the problems of river navigation, which grew more and more critical every day, he devoted his free time to the enrichment of his lyric repertoire. He liked nothing better than to sing at funerals. He had the voice of a galley slave, untrained but capable of impressive registers. Someone had told him that Enrico Caruso could shatter a vase with the power of his voice, and he had spent years trying to imitate him, even with the windowpanes. His friends brought him the most delicate vases they had come across in their travels through the world, and they organized special parties so that he might at last achieve the culmination of his dream. He never succeeded. Still, in the depth of his thundering there was a glimmer of tenderness that broke the hearts of his listeners as if they were the crystal vases of the great Caruso, and it was this that made him so revered at funerals. Except at one, when he thought it a good idea to sing “When I Wake Up in Glory,” a beautiful and moving funeral song from Louisiana, and he was told to be quiet by the priest, who could not understand that Protestant intrusion in his church.
这是莱昂十二·罗阿依萨的典型决定。在这个没有灵魂的商人的躯壳里，藏着一份本性的疯狂，可以让瓜希拉沙漠涌出一眼甘泉，也可以用他那令人撕心裂肺的《在那幽暗的坟墓里》的歌声，让一场高举大十字架的葬礼被泪水淹没。他一头鬈发，嘴唇像农牧神那样肥厚，只差一把里拉琴和一顶桂冠，就和基督教传说中的纵火者尼禄一模一样了。除了管理他那些老得掉渣的破船——它们还能漂在水面完全是因为命运之神的疏忽——以及航运中日益繁杂的问题以外，他空余的时间全都花在了丰富他的抒情曲目上。没有什么比在葬礼上唱歌更让他喜欢的了。他有一副划船苦役犯的嗓子，没有受过任何正规训练，却能驾驭令人惊讶的音域。有人告诉他，恩里科·卡鲁索仅靠声音就能把花瓶震成碎片，于是他花了几年时间试图模仿他，甚至想震碎窗玻璃。朋友们把旅行时能找到的最薄的花瓶带给他，还专门组织了一次次聚会，好让他达成梦想。他却从没有成功过。然而，他那雷鸣般的歌声中自是闪烁着一丝柔情，让听众的心都碎了，丝毫不亚于伟大的卡鲁索震碎细颈瓶。正因为这一点，他在葬礼上总是备受尊敬。除了有一次，他灵光一现想要唱《在光荣中醒来》，一首来自路易斯安那州的美丽而忧伤的挽歌，结果被神甫勒令制止，因为神甫不能允许马丁·路德涉足他的教堂。
And so, between operatic encores and Neapolitan serenades, his creative talent and his invincible entrepreneurial spirit made him the hero of river navigation during the time of its greatest splendor. He had come from nothing, like his dead brothers, and all of them went as far as they wished despite the stigma of being illegitimate children and, even worse, illegitimate children who had never been recognized. They were the cream of what in those days was called the “shop-counter aristocracy,” whose sanctuary was the Commercial Club. And yet, even when he had the resources to live like the Roman emperor he resembled, Uncle Leo XII lived in the old city because it was convenient to his business, in such an austere manner and in such a plain house that he could never shake off an unmerited reputation for miserliness. His only luxury was even simpler: a house by the sea, two leagues from his offices, furnished only with six handmade stools, a stand for earthenware jars, and a hammock on the terrace where he could lie down to think on Sundays. No one described him better than he did when someone accused him of being rich.
就这样，伴随着一首首歌剧曲目和那不勒斯小夜曲，他靠着自己的创造天赋和不屈不挠的实干精神，让他在河运事业最辉煌的时期成了这一领域的显赫人物。像两位已故的兄长一样，他也是白手起家。兄弟三人尽管背负着私生子的烙印，而且始终也没被家族承认过，但却都达到了设定的目标。他们是当时人们所说的“柜台贵族”中的佼佼者，商业俱乐部就是他们这类人的圣殿。然而，尽管已经拥有了可以过得像那位与他样貌相似的罗马皇帝一样的财富，莱昂十二叔叔却为了工作方便仍旧住在老城，生活十分节俭，房子也万般简陋，因此从未摘掉人们不公平地加在他身上的吝啬恶名。而他唯一的奢侈竟然更为简单：一座距离办公室两里地的海边房子，里面的家具不过就是六只手工做的凳子、一个装水瓮的木架柜，以及露台上的一张吊床，星期日，他可以躺在上面思考。有人说他是富人，可事实上，没有人比他更好地给自己作了定位。
The worst years were the early ones, when he was appointed clerk to the Board of Directors, which seemed a position made to order for him. Lotario Thugut, Uncle Leo XII’s old music teacher, was the one who advised him to give his nephew a writing job because he was a voracious wholesale consumer of literature, although he preferred the worst to the best. Uncle Leo XII disregarded what he said concerning his nephew’s bad taste in reading, for Lotario Thugut would also say of him that he had been his worst voice student, and still he could make even tombstones cry. In any case, the German was correct in regard to what he had thought about least, which was that Florentino Ariza wrote everything with so much passion that even official documents seemed to be about love. His bills of lading were rhymed no matter how he tried to avoid it, and routine business letters had a lyrical spirit that diminished their authority. His uncle himself came to his office one day with a packet of correspondence that he had not dared put his name to, and he gave him his last chance to save his soul.
最艰苦的是最初几年。他被任命为总经理的书记员，这个职务就像是特意为他而设的。洛达里奥·图古特曾是莱昂十二叔叔的音乐老师，正是他建议叔叔给侄子安排一个抄写的工作，因为他是个如饥似渴地阅读大量文学而不知疲倦的人，尽管读的好作品没有坏作品多。莱昂十二叔叔并未理会洛达里奥·图古特对侄子做出的读坏书的评价，因为洛达里奥·图古特也曾说过他是他唱歌唱得最差的学生，可他还不是能让墓碑也落泪。但不管怎样，德国人在某些他最没有留意的地方还是有道理的，那就是弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨无论写什么都激情澎湃，以至于公文读上去就像情书。尽管他刻意避免，但出自他笔下的载货清单依然带着韵脚，那些常规商业信函透出的抒情味道更是削弱了它们的权威性。一天，叔叔亲自来到他的办公室，手里拿着一包他甚至都没有勇气签上自己名字的信件，给了他最后一次拯救灵魂的机会。
“No, not rich,” he said. “I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing.”
“富人？不，”他说，“我只是个有钱的穷人，这压根儿不是一回事。”
His strange nature, which someone once praised in a speech as lucid dementia, allowed him to see in an instant what no one else ever saw in Florentino Ariza. From the day he came to his office to ask for work, with his doleful appearance and his twenty-six useless years behind him, he had tested him with the severity of a barracks training that could have broken the hardest man. But he did not intimidate him. What Uncle Leo XII never suspected was that his nephew’s courage did not come from the need to survive or from a brute indifference inherited from his father, but from a driving need for love, which no obstacle in this world or the next would ever break.
他的这种奇怪脾性——曾有人在某次演讲中称之为大智若愚——让他立刻就洞悉了此前和此后都未有人发现过的弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨身上的某种特性。自从那天一脸忧郁、虚度了二十七年光阴的弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨到他的办公室来申请一份差事，他便用军营里那种足以让最坚强的硬汉折腰的严酷制度来考验他。可最终也没有使侄子胆怯。莱昂十二叔叔从不怀疑，侄子的这种坚韧既非来自生存的需要，也非继承了其父亲粗鲁的冷漠，而是源自一种爱的雄心，无论是这个世界，还是另一个世界中的任何艰难险阻都无法将它摧垮。
“If you cannot write a business letter you will pick up the trash on the dock,” he said.
“如果你连一封商业信件都写不好，那就去码头扫垃圾吧。”他对他说。
Florentino Ariza accepted the challenge. He made a supreme effort to learn the mundane simplicity of mercantile prose, imitating models from notarial files with the same diligence he had once used for popular poets. This was the period when he spent his free time in the Arcade of the Scribes, helping unlettered lovers to write their scented love notes, in order to unburden his heart of all the words of love that he could not use in customs reports. But at the end of six months, no matter how hard he twis ted, he could not wring the neck of his die hard swan. So that when Uncle Leo XII reproached him a second time, he admitted defeat, but with a certain haughtiness.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨接受了挑战。他尽了最大努力去学习简单而世俗的商贸文体，就像当初模仿流行诗人一样勤奋地模仿着公证员文件的范本。那个时期，他的空闲时间都是在“代笔人门廊”度过的，帮助大字不识的恋人们书写香飘四溢的情书，以此释放内心积聚的那些在海关报告中毫无用武之地的绵绵情话。六个月过去了，尽管他竭尽全力，却依然没有扭断心中那顽石一般的天鹅脖子[1]。因此，当莱昂十二叔叔第二次训斥他时，他认输了，只是仍旧带着几分倨傲。（注：[1]此处暗指十九世纪末二十世纪初拉丁美洲的现代主义文学，其代表作家尼加拉瓜诗人鲁文·达里奥因偏爱运用唯美的天鹅形象，被称为“天鹅诗人”。）
“Love is the only thing that interests me,” he said.
“我唯一感兴趣的是爱。”他说。
He kept his threat to have him pick up trash on the dock, but he gave him his word that he would promote him, step by step, up the ladder of faithful service until he found his place. And he did. No work could defeat him, no matter how hard or humiliating it was, no salary, no matter how miserable, could demoralize him, and he never lost his essential fearlessness when faced with the insolence of his superiors. But he was not an innocent, either: everyone who crossed his path suffered the consequences of the overwhelming determination, capable of anything, that lay behind his helpless appearance. Just as Uncle Leo XII had foreseen, and according to his desire that his nephew not be ignorant of any secret in the business, Florentino Ariza moved through every post during thirty years of dedication and tenacity in the face of every trial. He fulfilled all his duties with admirable skill, studying every thread in that mysterious warp that had so much to do with the offices of poetry, but he never won the honor he most desired, which was to write one, just one, acceptable business letter. Without intending to, without even knowing it, he demonstrated with his life that his father had been right when he repeated until his dying day that there was no one with more common sense, no stonecutter more obstinate, no manager more lucid or dangerous, than a poet. That, at least, is what he was told by Uncle Leo XII, who talked to him about his father during moments of sentimental leisure and created an image that resembled a dreamer more than it did a businessman.
叔叔把威胁付诸行动，派他去码头清扫垃圾，但同时向他保证，如果干得好，就会一步一步把他提升上去，直到他找到自己合适的位置。事实也正是如此。没有任何一种工作能击败他，不管多么艰难，多么屈辱；少得可怜的工资没有让他垂头丧气；面对上司的傲慢无礼，他也不曾有片刻失去骨子里那无畏的勇气。但他并不是一个逆来顺受的人：所有挡在他路上的人都尝到了苦果，在那副无助的外表之下，有着势不可挡的决心，什么事都做得出来。正如莱昂十二叔叔所预见和期望的那样，在三十年的勤奋与各种考验的磨炼中，他做过所有职务，也洞悉了公司运作的每一项秘密。他以令人钦佩的能力胜任了每一个岗位，研究了那些与诗歌相通的神秘经络中的每一条丝线，但终究还是没能得到那枚他梦寐以求的勋章——写一封说得过去的商业信函，哪怕只有一封。在无意之中，甚至是在不自知的情况下，他用自己的生活证实了父亲的理论。父亲甚至在只剩下最后一口气的时候还在说，没有人会比诗人具有更敏锐的判断力，没有哪个石匠会比诗人更顽固，也没有哪个经理会比诗人更精明、更危险。至少，莱昂十二叔叔是这样告诉他的。叔叔在心情闲适的时候，会和他讲起他的父亲，给他的印象是与其说父亲是个企业家，毋宁说他是个梦想家。
“The trouble,” his uncle said to him, “is that without river navigation there is no love.”
“糟糕的是，”叔叔对他说，“没有河运就没有爱。”
The image of his father disturbed Florentino Ariza. His mother had spoken of him as a great man with no commercial vocation, who had at last gone into the river business because his older brother had been a very close collaborator of the German commodore Johann B. Elbers, the father of river navigation. They were the illegitimate sons of the same mother, a cook by trade, who had them by different men, and all bore her surname and the name of a pope chosen at random from the calendar of saints” days, except for Uncle Leo XII, named after the Pope in office when he was born. The man called Florentino was their maternal grandfather, so that the name had come down to the son of Tránsito Ariza after skipping over an entire generation of pontiffs.
父亲的这个形象令弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨困惑不已。母亲曾把父亲说成一个缺乏商业天赋的了不起的男人，他最终从事了河运生意是因为他的大哥与航运先驱、德国海军准将胡安·B·埃尔勃斯关系亲密。兄弟三人是一母同胞的私生子，这位母亲是个厨娘，和不同的男人生下他们。他们用了母亲的姓氏，而姓氏之前的名字则是她从瞻礼单上教皇们的名字中随便挑选的，只有莱昂十二用了他出生时在位的那位教皇的名字。他们的外公叫弗洛伦蒂诺，于是，这个名字跳过教皇一代，落到了特兰西多·阿里萨儿子的头上。
He told him that Pius V Loayza used the offices for matters more pleasant than work, and that he always arranged to leave the house on Sundays, with the excuse that he had to meet or dispatch a boat. What is more, he had an old boiler installed in the warehouse patio, with a steam whistle that someone would sound with navigation signals in the event his wife became suspicious. According to his calculations, Uncle Leo XII was certain that Florentino Ariza had been conceived on a desk in some unlocked office on a hot Sunday afternoon, while from her house his father’s wife heard the farewells of a boat that never sailed. By the time she learned the truth it was too late to accuse him of infamy because her husband was already dead. She survived him by many years, destroyed by the bitterness of not having a child and asking God in her prayers for the eternal damnation of his bastard son.
叔叔告诉他，皮奥第五·罗阿依萨给办公室增添了工作以外的愉快用途。他总是在星斯日离家到此休闲，借口要接船或者派船。更有甚者，他还叫人在仓库的院子里架起一只废弃的锅炉，上面安有汽笛，有人会按照航行信号鸣笛，以防他的妻子生疑。莱昂十二叔叔细想了一番，就肯定弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨是在一个闷热的星期日下午，在某间门都没关严的办公室的写字台上怀上的，而当时，他父亲的妻子正在家里听着一艘永远也不会起航的轮船发出一声声告别的汽笛声。当她发现此事的时候，已经太晚了，甚至都来不及让丈夫为自己的卑鄙行为付出代价，因为他已经死了。她比他多活了许多年，没有孩子的痛苦毁掉了她的生活，她在祷告中祈求上帝永远诅咒那个私生子。
He had also seen the only two pictures of his father. One had been taken in Santa Fe, when he was very young, the same age as Florentino Ariza when he saw the photograph for the first time, and in it he was wearing an overcoat that made him look as if he were stuffed inside a bear, and he was leaning against a pedestal that supported the decapitated gaiters of a statue. The little boy beside him was Uncle Leo XII, wearing a ship captain’s hat. In the other photograph, his father was with a group of soldiers in God knows which of so many wars, and he held the longest rifle, and his mustache had a gunpowder smell that wafted out of the picture. He was a Liberal and a Mason, just like his brothers, and yet he wanted his son to go to the seminary. Florentino Ariza did not see the resemblance that people observed, but according to his Uncle Leo XII, Pius V was also reprimanded for the lyricism of his documents. In any case, he did not resemble him in the pictures, or in his memories of him, or in the image trans figured by love that his mother painted, or in the one unpainted by his Uncle Leo XII with his cruel wit. Nevertheless, Florentino Ariza discovered the resemblance many years later, as he was combing his hair in front of the mirror, and only then did he understand that a man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father.
他还看见了父亲仅有的两张照片。一张是在圣菲照的，很年轻，就像他第一次见到父亲时父亲的那个年纪，照片中的他穿着一件大衣，仿佛钻进了一只熊的身体，倚在一座只剩下绑腿的雕像底座上，身边站的少年是莱昂十二叔叔，头上戴着一顶船长小帽。另一张照片上，父亲和一队士兵在一起，不知是那么多战争中的哪一场，他手里拿着最长的一杆猎枪，小胡子散发出的火药味都飘到照片外面来了。和两个兄弟一样，他是自由党，也是共济会成员，可他却希望儿子能进神学院。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨不觉得自己如人们说的那样和父亲很像，但据莱昂十二叔叔说，皮奥第五也曾被人指摘文件写得具有抒情色彩。不管怎样，他不像照片中的父亲，也不像自己记忆中的父亲，不像母亲因爱而描绘得走了样的父亲，更不像莱昂十二叔叔以其残酷的幽默描绘出的那个褪了色的父亲。然而，多年以后的某一天，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨在对镜梳头的时候，终于发现了他们之间的相似之处，也就是在那时，他明白了一个人意识到自己开始变老，是源于他发现自己开始长得像父亲了。
Florentino always kept the notebook in which his father wrote love poems, some of them inspired by Tránsito Ariza, its pages decorated with drawings of broken hearts. Two things surprised him. One was the character of his father’s handwriting, identical to his own although he had chosen his because it was the one he liked best of the many he saw in a manual. The other was finding a sentence that he thought he had composed but that his father had written in the notebook long before he was born: The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love.
弗洛伦蒂诺一直保留着父亲写情诗的一个本子，其中有几首的灵感来自特兰西多·阿里萨，而每一页上都画有破碎的心作为装饰。有两件事让他惊奇。其一是父亲那独特的字体竟与他的一模一样，而他其实是从一本教科书上的众多字体中挑出最喜欢的一种学的。其二是他找到了一句格言，他本以为那是自己的心声，可父亲在他出生前很久便写下了它：死亡让我感到的唯一痛苦，便是不能为爱而死。
Every Friday after school he sat across from the offices of the River Company of the Caribbean, looking at pictures of animals in a book that was falling apart because he had looked at it so often. His father would walk into the building without looking at him, wearing the frock coats that Tránsito Ariza later had to alter for him, and with a face identical to that of St. John the Evangelist on the altars. When he came out, many hours later, he would make certain that no one saw him, not even his coachman, and he would give him money for the week’s expenses. They did not speak, not only because his father made no effort to, but because he was terrified of him. One day, after he waited much longer than usual, his father gave him the coins and said: “Take them and do not come back again.”
每个星期五放学后，他都坐在加勒比河运公司的对面，看一本翻了无数遍、已经散架的动物画册。父亲一眼也不瞧他就走进了办公室，脸上的神情和祭台上的福音圣胡安[2]一模一样，身上穿着一件呢子长礼服，就是后来被特兰西多·阿里萨改了给他的那件。好几个小时后，父亲走出来，趁着连车夫都没有看到的时候，把一周的生活费递给他。两人都不说话，因为父亲不愿说，也因为他惧怕父亲。有一天，他等了比平常更久的时间后，父亲把钱交给他，说：“拿着，以后不要再来了。”（注：[2]圣胡安，即圣若望，传说是《若望福音》的作者，又译圣约翰。）
He had no memory of him on the Street of Windows. He thought he knew that at one time his father slept there, very early in his love affair with Tránsito Ariza, but that he did not visit her again after the birth of Florentino. For many years the baptismal certificate was our only valid means of identification, and Florentino Ariza’s, recorded in the parish church of St. Tiburtius, said only that he was the natural son of an unwed natural daughter called Tránsito Ariza. The name of his father did not appear on it, although Pius V took care of his son’s needs in secret until the day he died. This social condition closed the doors of the seminary to Florentino Ariza, but he also escaped military service during the bloodiest period of our wars because he was the only son of an unmarried woman.
他脑海中没有父亲出现在窗户街的记忆，只隐约知道有段时间他住在那里，就在与特兰西多·阿里萨相爱之初，但自己出生之后，父亲就再没来看过她。在很多年里，洗礼登记是证明我们身份的唯一有效途径，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的洗礼是在圣托利维奥教区登记的，只写着他是一个名叫特兰西多·阿里萨的独身私生女的私生子。登记上没有出现父亲的名字，但父亲秘密地供养儿子直到自己生命的最后一天。这种社会地位使神学院对弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨关上了大门，但也让他在我们连年战争最为血腥的那个时期逃过了兵役，因为他是一个未婚女人的独生子。
The drama of Florentino Ariza while he was a clerk for the River Company of the Caribbean was that he could not avoid lyricism because he was always thinking about Fermina Daza, and he had never learned to write without thinking about her. Later, when he was moved to other posts, he had so much love left over inside that he did not know what to do with it, and he offered it to unlettered lovers free of charge, writing their love missives for them in the Arcade of the Scribes. That is where he went after work. He would take off his frock coat with his circumspect gestures and hang it over the back of the chair, he would put on the cuffs so he would not dirty his shirt sleeves, he would unbutton his vest so he could think better, and sometimes until very late at night he would encourage the hopeless with letters of mad adoration. From time to time he would be approached by a poor woman who had a problem with one of her children, a war veteran who persisted in demanding payment of his pension, someone who had been robbed and wanted to file a complaint with the government, but no matter how he tried, he could not satisfy them, because the only convincing document he could write was a love letter. He did not even ask his new clients any questions, because all he had to do was look at the whites of their eyes to know what their problem was, and he would write page after page of uncontrolled love, following the infallible formula of writing as he thought about Fermina Daza and nothing but Fermina Daza. After the first month he had to establish a system of appointments made in advance so that he would not be swamped by yearning lovers.
在加勒比河运公司当书记员时，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的悲剧就在于他无法摆脱抒情体，因为他时时刻刻都在思念费尔明娜·达萨，也永远都学不会在写作时不去想她。后来，他被调到别的岗位，内心的爱依然满溢，他不知如何是好，便把爱送给那些大字不识的恋人们，在“代笔人门廊”为他们免费写情书。下班之后，他就到那里去，从容地脱掉长礼服，挂在椅背上，然后戴上半截套袖，以免弄脏衬衫袖子，再解开背心扣，以便更好地思考。有时，他一直在那里待到夜深，用一封封令人疯狂的情书鼓舞着那些无助的人。有时，他会遇到一位跟孩子之间出了问题的可怜女人，或是一位坚持申领养老金的退伍老兵，又或是某个被偷了东西想向政府申诉的人，可无论他多么尽心竭力，也还是无法让他们满意，因为他唯一能令人信服的就只有情书。他甚至无需向新来的顾客提问，只消看一眼他们翻起的眼白，便清楚他们的处境。他为他们写下一页又一页的情信以倾诉胆大妄为的爱情，依循着十分可靠的模式——写信时一直想着费尔明娜·达萨，什么都不想，只想着她。第一个月后，他不得不建立起预约制度，以免自己被焦虑的恋人们淹没。
It was the last time he saw him. But in time he was to learn that Uncle Leo XII, who was some ten years younger, continued to bring money to Tránsito Ariza, and was the one who took care of her after Pius V died of an untreated colic without leaving anything in writing and without the time to make any provisions for his only child: a child of the streets.
那是他最后一次见到父亲。但后来他知道，钱由比父亲小十来岁的莱昂十二叔叔继续带给特兰西多·阿里萨。而在皮奥第五死于一次治疗不善的肠绞痛后，也是叔叔担起了照顾母亲的责任。父亲只字未留，也没有做出任何有利于他这个唯一儿子的安排：一个被丢在街上的儿子。
His most pleasant memory of that time was of a very timid young girl, almost a child, who trembled as she asked him to write an answer to an irresistible letter that she had just received, and that Florentino Ariza recognized as one he had written on the previous afternoon. He answered it in a different style, one that was in tune with the emotions and the age of the girl, and in a hand that also seemed to be hers, for he knew how to create a handwriting for every occasion, according to the character of each person. He wrote, imagining to himself what Fermina Daza would have said to him if she had loved him as much as that helpless child loved her suitor. Two days later, of course, he had to write the boy’s reply with the same hand, style, and kind of love that he had attributed to him in the first letter, and so it was that he became involved in a feverish correspondence with himself. Before a month had passed, each came to him separately to thank him for what he himself had proposed in the boy’s letter and accepted with devotion in the girl’s response: they were going to marry.
那个时期他最愉快的记忆是关于一个羞怯的姑娘的，她几乎还是个小女孩，颤抖着请求他为自己刚刚收到的一封无法拒绝的信写一封回信。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨认出那封信正是自己前一天下午写的。于是，他依照姑娘的情感和年龄，回了一封风格迥然不同的信，甚至笔迹也像出自这位姑娘之手，因为他会根据每个人的性格，为不同的情况模仿出一种字体来。他写信时，一直幻想着如果费尔明娜·达萨像这个无助的小姑娘爱她的追求者一样爱他，会给他回一封怎样的信。自然，两天后，他又不得不为这位情郎写回信，用他早在第一封信中就定下的笔迹、风格和爱情的类型。就这样，他最终陷入了自己给自己写信的狂热之中。不到一个月，姑娘和小伙子分别来向他道谢，因为他在男孩信中提出的建议在姑娘的回信中被热情地接受了：他们就要结婚了。
Only when they had their first child did they realize, after a casual conversation, that their letters had been written by the same scribe, and for the first time they went together to the Arcade to ask him to be the child’s godfather. Florentino Ariza was so enraptured by the practical evidence of his dreams that he used time he did not have to write a Lovers” Companion that was more poetic and extensive than the one sold in doorways for twenty centavos and that half the city knew by heart. He categorized all the imaginable situations in which he and Fermina Daza might find themselves, and for all of them he wrote as many models and alternatives as he could think of. When he finished, he had some thousand letters in three volumes as complete as the Covarrubias Dictionary, but no printer in the city would take the risk of publishing them, and they ended up in an attic along with other papers from the past, for Tránsito Ariza flatly refused to dig out the earthenware jars and squander the savings of a lifetime on a mad publishing venture. Years later, when Florentino Ariza had the resources to publish the book himself, it was difficult for him to accept the reality that love letters had gone out of fashion.
直到他们有了第一个孩子，才在一次偶然的谈话中发现，原来两人的信是同一位代笔先生所写。于是，他们头一次一起来到了门廊下，请求他做他们孩子的教父。看到自己梦想的明证，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨极为兴奋，百忙中挤出时间写了一本《恋人指南》，比一直在门廊里卖二十生太伏且已经被半城人背得滚瓜烂熟的那一本更富有诗意，内容也更广泛。他把想象中费尔明娜·达萨和他遇到的各种情况排列成序，为每种情况都写了无数封信件作范例，包含各类他觉得可能的去信和回信。最后，他共写了一千多封，分为三卷，每卷都是科瓦鲁维亚斯的字典那样的大部头。但城中没有一个印刷商肯冒险出版它。他只好将它们束之高阁，和过去的一些手稿堆在一起，因为特兰西多·阿里萨断然拒绝从地下挖出她的罐子，把一生的积蓄浪费在一次出版书稿的疯狂举动上。若干年后，当弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨终于自己有钱出版这部书时，又费了很大努力才接受了这些情书已经过时的现实。
As he was starting out in the River Company of the Caribbean and writing letters free of charge in the Arcade of the Scribes, the friends of Florentino Ariza’s youth were certain that they were slowly losing him beyond recall. And they were right. When he returned from his voyage along the river, he still saw some of them in the hope of dimming the memory of Fermina Daza, he played billiards with them, he went to their dances, he allowed himself to be raffled off among the girls, he allowed himself to do everything he thought would help him to become the man he had once been. Later, when Uncle Leo XII took him on as an employee, he played dominoes with his officemates in the Commercial Club, and they began to accept him as one of their own when he spoke to them of nothing but the navigation company, which he did not call by its complete name but by its initials: the R C. C. He even changed the way he ate. As indifferent and irregular as he had been until then regarding food, that was how habitual and austere he became until the end of his days: a large cup of black coffee for breakfast, a slice of poached fish with white rice for lunch, a cup of café con leche and a piece of cheese before going to bed. He drank black coffee at any hour, anywhere, under any circumstances, as many as thirty little cups a day: a brew like crude oil which he preferred to prepare himself and which he always kept near at hand in a thermos. He was another person, despite his firm decision and anguished efforts to continue to be the same man he had been before his mortal encounter with love.
当弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨在加勒比河运公司迈出了最初几步并在“代笔人门廊”为人免费写信时，他年轻时的朋友确信他们已在慢慢地失去他，再也回不到过去了。的确如此。当初他从河上旅行回来，还去见了一些朋友，希望借此减轻对费尔明娜·达萨的思念。他和他们一起去打台球，参加了最后几次舞会，偶尔还甘愿做姑娘们争抢的对象，并做所有他觉得有助于让他回到从前的事。后来，莱昂十二叔叔聘他为公司职员，他便开始和办公室同事一起在商业俱乐部玩多米诺骨牌。等到他和他们只聊河运公司里的事，且从不提公司全称，而用缩写字母CFC指代时，他们开始把他视作自己人。他甚至连饮食习惯都改变了。之前，他对餐桌上的事并不在意，也毫无规律可言，但自那时起，他的饮食开始每日相同，且极为节俭，直到他人生最后的日子：早餐是一大杯苦咖啡，午餐是一块炖鱼配白米饭，睡觉前再喝一杯咖啡加牛奶，配一块奶酪。他随时随地、不分场合地喝苦咖啡，一天甚至能喝上三十小杯。那是原油似的汤剂，他喜欢亲自煮，总是装在一只保温瓶里，放在伸手可及的地方。他变成了另外一个人：虽然他抱着坚定的决心，也付出了热切的努力，想回到遭受爱情致命打击前的那个他，但事与愿违。
The truth is that he was never the same again. Winning back Fermina Daza was the sole purpose of his life, and he was so certain of achieving it sooner or later that he convinced Tránsito Ariza to continue with the restoration of the house so that it would be ready to receive her whenever the miracle took place. In contrast to her reaction to the proposed publication of the Lovers” Companion, Tránsito Ariza went much further: she bought the house at once and undertook a complete renovation. They made a reception room where the bedroom had been, on the upper floor they built two spacious, bright bedrooms, one for the married couple and another for the children they were going to have, and in the space where the old tobacco factory had been they put in an extensive garden with all kinds of roses, which Florentino Ariza himself tended during his free time at dawn. The only thing they left intact, as a kind of testimony of gratitude to the past, was the notions shop. The back room where Florentino Ariza had slept they left as it had always been, with the hammock hanging and the writing table covered with untidy piles of books, but he moved to the room planned as the conjugal bedroom on the upper floor. This was the largest and airiest in the house, and it had an interior terrace where it was pleasant to sit at night because of the sea breeze and the scent of the rosebushes, but it was also the room that best reflected Florentino Ariza’s Trappist severity. The plain whitewashed walls were rough and unadorned, and the only furniture was a prison cot, a night table with a candle in a bottle, an old wardrobe, and a washstand with its basin and bowl.
事实是，他再也不可能回到从前了。重新赢得费尔明娜·达萨的芳心成了他生活中唯一的目标。他坚信自己早晚能夺回她，于是说服特兰西多·阿里萨继续修缮房屋，以便随时在奇迹发生时迎接她的到来。与对出版《恋人指南》这一提议的反应不同，特兰西多·阿里萨在这件事上甚至超前一步：她当即买下房子，开始全面翻新。原来的卧室变成了一间会客厅，又在二层建起了一间供小两口使用的卧室，以及一个为两人将来的孩子准备的房间，两间房都宽敞明亮。在以前烟草厂房的位置，建起了一个很大的花园，里面种了各个品种的玫瑰，全是弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨利用清晨的空闲亲自栽种的。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨曾经住的店铺里间永久地保持了原貌，吊床仍旧挂在那儿，写字台上乱七八糟地堆满了书，而他却已搬到二层预备做婚房的那个房间去了。那是整座房子中最宽敞、最凉爽的一间，阳台建在了屋内，晚上海风轻拂，空气中飘着玫瑰园的馨香，坐在那里惬意无比，但同时，这间屋也最符合弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨特拉普派修道士式的清苦生活。用生石灰抹的墙壁光秃而粗糙，家具不过是一张苦役犯式的床，一个床头柜，上面放了支插在瓶口的蜡烛，还有一个陈旧的衣柜和一个放着水舀和脸盆的盆架。
The work took almost three years, and it coincided with a brief civic revival owing to the boom in river navigation and trade, the same factors that had maintained the city’s greatness during colonial times and for more than two centuries had made her the gateway to America. But that was also the period when Tránsito Ariza manifested the first symptoms of her incurable disease. Her regular clients were older, paler, and more faded each time they came to the notions shop, and she did not recognize them after dealing with them for half a lifetime, or she confused the affairs of one with those of another, which was a very grave matter in a business like hers, in which no papers were signed to protect her honor or theirs, and one’s word of honor was given and accepted as sufficient guarantee. At first it seemed she was growing deaf, but it soon became evident that her memory was trickling away. And so she liquidated her pawn business, the treasure in the jars paid for completing and furnishing the house, and still left over were many of the most valuable old jewels in the city, whose owners did not have funds to redeem them.
房屋修缮持续了将近三年，恰与本城的重建工作步调一致。城市迅速复兴，因为河运和贸易往来正处于鼎盛期，在殖民时期，正是这两个因素维持着这座城市的繁荣，让它在两个多世纪里成为美洲的门户。但也是在这段日子，特兰西多·阿里萨的不治之症表现出最初的征兆。老主顾们每到她的杂货铺来，一次比一次衰老，一次比一次干瘪，也越来越令人难以捉摸。她跟她们打了半辈子交道，竟然认不出她们来，或者常常把一个人的事和另一个人的搞混了。这种问题对于做她这类生意的人来说是非常严重的，因为为了维护双方的名誉，她们从不签字据，一句口头承诺即是保证。起先，她以为是自己的耳朵聋了，但很快便证实是记忆从她年久失修的身体中溜走了。于是，她清算了她的典当生意，罐子里的财富足够完成房屋修缮并添置家具，此外还能剩下很多件全城最贵重的古老首饰，它们的主人根本无力赎回。
During this period Florentino Ariza had to attend to too many responsibilities at the same time, but his spirits never flagged as he sought to expand his work as a furtive hunter. After his erratic experience with the Widow Nazaret, which opened the door to street love, he continued to hunt the abandoned little birds of the night for several years, still hoping to find a cure for the pain of Fermina Daza. But by then he could no longer tell if his habit of fornicating without hope was a mental necessity or a simple vice of the body. His visits to the transient hotel became less frequent, not only because his interests lay elsewhere but because he did not like them to see him there under circumstances that were different from the chaste domesticity of the past. Nevertheless, in three emergency situations he had recourse to the simple strategy of an era before his time: he dis guised his friends, who were afraid of being recognized, as men, and they walked into the hotel together as if they were two gentlemen out on the town. Yet on two of these occasions someone realized that he and his presumptive male companion did not go to the bar but to a room, and the already tarnished reputation of Florentino Ariza received the coup de grace. At last he stopped going there, except for the very few times he did so not to catch up on what he had missed but for just the opposite reason: to find a refuge where he could recuperate from his excesses.
那时，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨要同时兼顾许多事务，但这并没有减弱他越来越频繁地窃玉偷香的热情。和拿撒勒寡妇那段飘忽不定的经历为他打开了街头爱情之门。此后的很多年，他都一直在猎捕夜间的孤鸟，幻想能减轻费尔明娜·达萨之痛。但到后来，他已说不清这绝望的通奸习惯到底是出于内心需要，还是单纯的身体恶习。他去小旅馆的次数越来越少，不只因为他的兴趣改变了方向，而且他不愿让熟人看到，他已远不是当初那个温顺而纯真的少年了。然而，有三次在情急之下，他借助了一种古远年代惯用的简单手法：把害怕被人认出的女友化装成男人，然后装作打算整晚狂欢的人傲慢地走进小旅馆。但至少有两次都被不少人发现，他和那位所谓的男同伴没有去酒吧间，而是进了一个房间。于是，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨那本来已经相当糟糕的名声经历了致命一击。最后他干脆就不再去了。只有极少的几次，他又重游故地，并不是为了及时行乐，而是恰恰相反：为了寻找一个避难所，从荒淫无度中恢复过来。
The lighthouse was always a blessed refuge in a storm, which he evoked with nostalgia in the dawn of his old age when he had everything settled, because it was a good place to be happy, above all at night, and he thought that something of his loves from that time flashed out to the sailors with every turn of the light. So that he continued to go there more than to any other spot, while his friend the lighthouse keeper was delighted to receive him with a simpleminded expression on his face that was the best guarantee of discretion for the frightened little birds. There was a house at the foot of the tower, close to the thunder of the waves breaking against the cliffs, where love was more intense because it seemed like a shipwreck. But Florentino Ariza preferred the light tower itself, late at night, because one could see the entire city and the trail of lights on the fishing boats at sea, and even in the distant swamps.
灯塔一直是个幸福的避风港。当他刚刚迈入暮年，生活中的一切都已安定时，他还时常怀念它，因为那里的确是个让人享受欢愉的好地方，尤其是在晚上。他总觉得，自己偷欢的情景会通过灯塔的每一次闪烁传到航海者那里去。所以，他继续到灯塔去，比去其他任何地方的次数都多。那位看灯塔的朋友总是很高兴地接待他，满脸的忠厚老实，这对那些惊慌的小鸟来说是最好的镇定剂。灯塔下面有一座房子，紧挨着在峭壁上撞得粉碎的咆哮的海浪，在那儿做爱，性欲更加浓烈，因为仿佛遭遇了海难。但弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨更喜欢待在灯塔，破晓时分，从那里可以隐约看见整座城市，海上渔船那一串串的灯火，甚至还有远处的沼泽。
And it was just as well. No sooner did he leave his office at five in the afternoon than he began to hunt like a chicken hawk. At first he was content with what the night provided. He picked up serving girls in the parks, black women in the market, sophisticated young ladies from the interior on the beaches, gringas on the boats from New Orleans. He took them to the jetties where half the city also went after nightfall, he took them wherever he could, and sometimes even where he could not, and not infrequently he had to hurry into a dark entryway and do what he could, however he could do it, behind the gate.
他这么做绝对是有道理的。下午五点左右，刚一离开办公室，他便像鹰捉小鸡一样展开猎捕行动。起初，无论夜晚带给他什么，他都满足。公园中的女仆，市场上的黑女人，海滩上风情万种的淑女，新奥尔良船上的外国妞儿，他照单全收。他把她们带到防波堤上，从日落开始，半城人都在那里做着同样的事。他把她们带到所有能干那种事的地方，有时连没法干的地方也去：有不少次，他都不得不急匆匆地钻进某个漆黑的门洞，躲在门后尽力做着他所要做的事。
It was in those days that he devised his rather simplistic theories concerning the relationship between a woman’s appearance and her aptitude for love. He distrusted the sensual type, the ones who looked as if they could eat an alligator raw and tended to be the most passive in bed. The type he preferred was just the opposite: those skinny little tadpoles that no one bothered to turn around and look at in the street, who seemed to disappear when they took off their clothes, who made you feel sorry for them when their bones cracked at the first impact, and yet who could leave the man who bragged the most about his virility ready for the trashcan. He had made notes of these premature observations, intending to write a practical supplement to the Lovers” Companion, but the project met the same fate as the previous one after Ausencia Santander sent him tumbling with her old dog’s wisdom, stood him on his head, tossed him up and threw him down, made him as good as new, shattered all his virtuous theories, and taught him the only thing he had to learn about love: that nobody teaches life anything.
在那段时期，他形成了关于女人的身体和她们爱的能力之间关系的相当粗浅的理论。他不相信外表性感的那类，看上去能生吞一只短吻鳄的女人，通常在床上是最被动的。恰恰相反，他喜欢瘦得皮包骨的小青蛙似的女人，走在街上甚至没有人愿意费力气回头看她们一眼，仿佛脱掉衣服后就什么也不剩了，一碰之下，那骨头还咯吱作响得让人可怜，然而，她们却能让最爱吹嘘床上功夫的男人自愧不如。他记下这些尚不成熟的观点，准备为《恋人指南》写一卷实用增订本，但奥森西娅·桑坦德尔的出现使这个计划遭受了和之前的出版打算同样的命运。这个女人用她那老狗一样的智慧，将他上下左右结结实实地调教了一番，让他彻头彻尾地重生了一次，同时，也击碎了他那些精妙绝伦的理论，给他上了一堂唯一该上的爱之课——谁也别妄图当生活的老师。
Ausencia Santander had had a conventional marriage for twenty years, which left her with three children who had married and had children in turn, so that she boasted of being the grandmother with the best bed in the city. It was never clear if she had abandoned her husband, or if he had abandoned her, or if they had abandoned each other at the same time, but he went to live with his regular mistress, and then she felt free, in the middle of the day and at the front door, to receive Rosendo de la Rosa, a riverboat captain whom she had often received in the middle of the night at the back door. Without giving the matter a second thought, he brought Florentino Ariza to meet her.
奥森西娅·桑坦德尔曾有一段长达二十年的普普通通的婚姻，育有三个子女，而后，子女又结婚生了子女，所以她自夸是全城最享清福的祖母。始终没人能弄清楚，究竟是她抛弃了丈夫，还是丈夫抛弃了她，抑或是两人同时抛弃了对方。总之，他和一直以来的情人住在一起，而她也终于感到了自由，可以大白天从前门，而非以往那样晚上从后门接待内河船长罗森多·德拉罗萨了。正是这位船长，想都没想，就把弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨带到了她家。
He brought him for lunch. He also brought a demijohn of home made aguardiente and ingredients of the highest quality for an epic sancocho, the kind that was possible only with chickens from the patio, meat with tender bones, rubbish-heap pork, and greens and vegetables from the towns along the river. Nevertheless, from the very first, Florentino Ariza was not as enthusiastic about the excellence of the cuisine or the exuberance of the lady of the house as he was about the beauty of the house itself. He liked her because of her house, bright and cool, with four large windows facing the sea and beyond that a complete view of the old city. He liked the quantity and the splendor of the things that gave the living room a confused and at the same time rigorous appearance, with all kinds of handcrafted objects that Captain Rosendo de la Rosa brought back from each trip until there was no room left for another piece. On the sea terrace, sitting on his private ring, was a cockatoo from Malaya, with unbelievable white plumage and a pensive tranquillity that gave one much to think about: it was the most beautiful animal that Florentino Ariza had ever seen.
船长是带他去吃午饭的。此外，还带去了一瓶家酿的烧酒和各种质量上乘的配料，足以做一锅史诗般的炖杂烩——只有用家养的鸡、脆骨肉、垃圾堆里养的猪，以及河边村落里种的菜豆和蔬菜，才能做出这道大菜。然而一开始，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨既没有对美味的菜肴动心，也没有对风韵犹存的女主人表现出多大热情，而是对她家漂亮的房子欣赏有加。他喜欢这幢房子，它明亮凉爽，有四扇大窗面朝大海，还能远眺古城的全貌。他也喜欢那些琳琅满目、光彩照人的陈设，全都是罗森多·德拉罗萨船长每次出海时带回来的各式精美的手工艺品，多得连再放一件的地方也没有了，让客厅看上去既神秘复杂又精致无比。朝海的露台上，一只马来西亚白鹦鹉站在只属于自己的铁环上，羽毛白得令人难以置信，它摆出一副沉思的样子，带给人无限的思考——这是弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨见过的最美的动物。
Captain Rosendo de la Rosa was enthusiastic about his guest’s enthusiasm, and he told him in detail the history of each object. As he spoke he sipped aguardiente without pause. He seemed to be made of reinforced concrete: he was enormous, with hair all over his body except on his head, a mustache like a housepainter’s brush, a voice like a capstan, which would have been his alone, and an exquisite courtesy. But not even his body could resist the way he drank. Before they sat down to the table he had finished half of the demijohn, and he fell forward onto the tray of glasses and bottles with a slow sound of demolition. Ausencia Santander had to ask Florentino Ariza to help her drag the inert body of the beached whale to bed and undress him as he slept. Then, in a flash of inspiration that they attributed to a conjunction of their stars, the two of them undressed in the next room without agreeing to, without even suggesting it or proposing it to each other, and for more than seven years they continued undressing wherever they could while the Captain was on a trip. There was no danger of his surprising them, because he had the good sailor’s habit of advising the port of his arrival by sounding the ship’s horn, even at dawn, first with three long howls for his wife and nine children, and then with two short, melancholy ones for his mistress.
看见客人兴奋，罗森多·德拉罗萨船长也高兴不已，细细讲述了每件东西的来历。他一边讲，一边喝着烧酒，虽是小口小口地啜，却没有停过。他看上去仿佛钢筋水泥做成的：身形巨大，除了脑壳是光的，全身上下都是毛，髭须像把粗刷子，声音像绞盘一样，除了他不会再有第二个人有这样的嗓音，而他的待客礼节却又是极周到的。不过，没有任何人的身体能顶得住他那种喝酒方式。还没上餐桌，他就已经喝掉半瓶酒了。终于，他趴倒在放杯子和酒瓶的托盘上，发出一声长长的爆炸般的轰响。奥森西娅·桑坦德尔只好请求弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨帮忙把这头搁浅的鲸鱼毫无生气的身体拖到床上去，并给睡着了的他脱去衣服。之后，两人感谢彼此星辰的交会所带来的灵感火花，在隔壁房间脱掉了衣服，没有商量，没有暗示，甚至也没有谁提议，并且在此后的七年里，每当船长出海，两人一有机会便继续如此脱衣服。没有丝毫被发现的危险，因为船长有一个优秀海员的习惯，即到港之时，哪怕是黎明，也要拉响船上的汽笛，先用三声长鸣通知妻子和九个孩子，再用两声短促而忧伤的笛声知会情人。
Ausencia Santander was almost fifty years old and looked it, but she had such a personal instinc t for love that no homegrown or scientific theories could interfere with it. Florentino Ariza knew from the ship’s itineraries when he could visit her, and he always went unannounced, whenever he wanted to, at any hour of the day or night, and never once was she not waiting for him. She would open the door as her mother had raised her until she was seven years old: stark naked, with an organdy ribbon in her hair. She would not let him take another step until she had undressed him, because she thought it was bad luck to have a clothed man in the house. This was the cause of constant discord with Captain Rosendo de la Rosa, because he had the superstitious belief that smoking naked brought bad luck, and at times he preferred to put off love rather than put out his inevitable Cuban cigar. On the other hand, Florentino Ariza was very taken with the charms of nudity, and she removed his clothes with sure delight as soon as she closed the door, not even giving him time to greet her, or to take off his hat or his glasses, kissing him and letting him kiss her with sharp-toothed kisses, unfastening his clothes from bottom to top, first the buttons of his fly, one by one after each kiss, then his belt buckle, and at the last his vest and shirt, until he was like a live fish that had been slit open from head to tail. Then she sat him in the living room and took off his boots, pulled on his trouser cuffs so that she could take off his pants while she removed his long underwear, and at last she undid the garters around his calves and took off his socks. Then Florentino Ariza stopped kissing her and letting her kiss him so that he could do the only thing he was responsible for in that precise ceremony: he took his watch and chain out of the buttonhole in his vest and took off his glasses and put them in his boots so he would be sure not to forget them. He always took that precaution, always without fail, whenever he undressed in someone else’s house.
奥森西娅·桑坦德尔已年近五十，看起来也绝不会小于这个年纪，但她对爱有一种独特的本能，任何民间或科学的理论都不能干扰它。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨通过轮船行程表就知道什么时候能去拜访她，他从不事先通知，想去的时候便去，不管白天黑夜，而没一次她不是在等他。每次她给他开门，都是像母亲把她一直养到七岁时的那个样子：全身赤裸，只在头上用薄纱系着一个蝴蝶结。在脱掉他的衣服之前，她不会让弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨再往前踏一步，因为她一直认为家里有个穿着衣服的男人是不吉利的。这也是她和罗森多·德拉罗萨船长常常发生分歧的原因：船长迷信地认为光着身子抽烟会招致厄运，所以有时宁可推迟做爱，也不愿熄灭他那支不可或缺的古巴雪茄。相反，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨却十分迷恋裸体的魅力。刚一关上门，甚至都不给他问候的时间，也不等他摘掉帽子和眼镜，她便带着真诚的喜悦，为他脱去衣服，一边脱一边吻他，同时也让他一连串地亲吻她。她为他自下而上解开扣子，先是裤子的门襟，每解一颗扣便吻他一下，然后是腰带上的卡子，最后是背心和衬衫的扣子，直至他看上去就像一条被活生生开了膛的鱼。接着，她让他在客厅里坐下，为他脱掉靴子，从裤腿处将裤子和里面的衬裤一同拉到脚踝，最后，松开他腿肚子上的松紧袜带，为他褪下长袜。这时，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨停止吻她，也不让她亲吻自己，而是着手进行这套精准仪式中他所唯一负责的部分：从背心的扣眼上取下怀表，再摘下眼镜，然后把两样东西一起放进靴子，以确保不会落在这里。在别人家脱光衣服时，他总是这么谨慎行事，从不疏漏。
As soon as he had done that, she attacked him without giving him time for anything else, there on the same sofa where she had just undressed him, and only on rare occasions in the bed. She mounted him and took control of all of him for all of her, absorbed in herself, her eyes closed, gauging the situation in her absolute inner darkness, advancing here, retreating there, correcting her invisible route, trying another, more intense path, another means of proceeding without drowning in the slimy marsh that flowed from her womb, droning like a horsefly as she asked herself questions and answered in her native jargon; where was that something in the shadows that only she knew about and that she longed for just for herself, until she succumbed without waiting for anybody, she fell alone into her abyss with a jubilant explosion of total victory that made the world tremble. Florentino Ariza was left exhausted, incomplete, floating in a puddle of their perspiration, but with the impression of being no more than an instrument of pleasure. He would say: “You treat me as if I were just anybody.” She would roar with the laughter of a free female and say: “Not at all: as if you were nobody.” He was left with the impression that she took away everything with mean-spirited greed, and his pride would rebel and he would leave the house determined never to return. But then he would wake for no reason in the middle of the night, and the memory of the self-absorbed love of Ausencia Santander was revealed to him for what it was: a pitfall of happiness that he despised and desired at the same time, but from which it was impossible to escape.
他刚一做完这些，她便从不给他留下一丁点儿多余的时间，立刻就在她为他脱去裤子的沙发上向他发起进攻，只有很少几次是在床上。她钻到他身子下面，将他完全地占为己有。她封闭在自我的世界里，闭着眼在身体内部的绝对黑暗中探寻，一会儿往这边进，一会儿往那边退，不断纠正那看不见的方向，尝试开辟一条更为强烈的途径，寻找另一种方式，以免迷失在腹内流出的黏稠泥沼之中。她用一种难懂的家乡话像牛虻一样发出嗡嗡的声响，自问自答着哪里才是黑暗中只有她自己知晓、也只被她自己所渴求的那个地方。最终，她独自一人先迫不及待地屈服了，坠入自己的深渊，伴随着一声大获全胜的喜悦的爆炸，震动了整个世界。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨精疲力竭，兴犹未尽，漂浮在两人汗水形成的水洼之中，觉得自己不过是别人享乐的工具而已。他说：“你对我不过就像在众多男人中又加上一个罢了。”她淫荡地放声大笑，说：“恰恰相反：是众多男人中又少了一个。”他顿时觉得她怀着吝啬的贪婪，想把一切都据为己有，于是，一股傲气涌上心头，他从她家走了出来，决心不再回去。但很快，带着午夜孤独中可怕的清醒，他无缘无故地又醒悟过来，回想起奥森西娅·桑坦德尔那自我陶醉的爱欲，他豁然明白了事情的本来面目：这是一个幸福的陷阱，他既厌恶又渴望，但总之，他逃不掉。
One Sunday, two years after they met, the first thing she did when he arrived was to take off his glasses instead of undressing him, so that she could kiss him with greater ease, and this was how Florentino Ariza learned that she had begun to love him. Despite the fact that from the first day he had felt very comfortable in the house that he now loved as if it were his own, he had never stayed longer than two hours, and he had never slept there, and he had eaten there only once because she had given him a formal invitation. He went there, in fact, only for what he had come for, always bringing his only gift, a single rose, and then he would disappear until the next unforeseeable time. But on the Sunday when she took off his glasses to kiss him, in part because of that and in part because they fell asleep after gentle love-making, they spent the afternoon naked in the Captain’s enormous bed. When he awoke from his nap, Florentino Ariza still remembered the shrieking of the cockatoo, whose strident calls belied his beauty. But the silence was diaphanous in the four o’clock heat, and through the bedroom window one could see the outline of the old city with the afternoon sun at its back, its golden domes, its sea in flames all the way to Jamaica. Ausencia Santander stretched out an adventurous hand, seeking the sleeping beast, but Florentino Ariza moved it away. He said: “Not now. I feel something strange, as if someone were watching us.” She aroused the cockatoo again with her joyous laughter. She said: “Not even Jonah’s wife would swallow that story.” Neither did she, of course, but she admitted it was a good one, and the two of them loved each other for a long time in silence without making love again. At five o’clock, with the sun still high, she jumped out of bed, naked as always and with the organdy ribbon in her hair, and went to find something to drink in the kitchen. But she had not taken a single step out of the bedroom when she screamed in horror.
相识两年后的某个星期日，他到她家之后，她做的第一件事不是为他脱衣服，而是摘掉他的眼镜，以更好地亲吻他，于是，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨明白，她开始爱上他了。尽管从第一次到这所房子的那天起，他就觉得很自在，像喜欢自己家一样喜欢这里，但每次他待的时间都不会超过两小时，也从没有在这里睡过觉，饭只吃过一次，那是她向他发出了正式的邀请。事实上，他每次来，都只是为了那一个目的，带一枝孤零零的玫瑰作为唯一的礼物，完事之后便消失，直至下一次不可预见的机会到来。但就在她为了吻他而摘下他眼镜的那个星期日，一方面因为这个，另一方面也因为两人平静地做完爱后睡着了，他们竟赤身裸体地在船长那张巨大的床上度过了整个下午。从午觉中醒来时，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨还记得那只白鹦鹉的尖叫声，它铜管乐器般凄厉的声音与它美丽的外表背道而驰。但在下午四点的炎热中，一切都静得仿佛透明一般，从卧室的窗子可以望见老城的轮廓——下午的阳光照在它的脊背上——一个个金色的屋顶，还有仿佛在燃烧的通往牙买加的大海。奥森西娅·桑坦德尔伸出一只探险的手，摸索着那只躺卧的猛兽，但弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨把她的手移开了。他说：“现在不行，我有种奇怪的感觉，好像有人在看着我们。”她又一次用欢快的笑声惊扰了白鹦鹉。她说：“这个借口就连约纳的老婆都不会信[3]。”她当然也不会信，但她承认这是个不坏的说法。于是，两人又静静地温存了许久，没有再做爱。五点钟时，太阳还高高挂着，她跳下床，一如既往地赤裸着身体，头上系着薄纱蝴蝶结，想去厨房找点儿喝的东西。但她还没有迈出卧室门一步，便发出了一声惊恐的尖叫。（注：[3]典出《旧约·约纳书》。约纳又译约拿。上帝曾安排一条大鱼吞掉了约纳，使他在鱼腹中待了三日三夜。加西亚·马尔克斯曾在一篇文章中幽默地说，虚构文学是约纳发明的，因为他迟了三天回家，并且让他老婆相信他的迟归是因为一条鲸鱼把他吞掉了。）
Florentino Ariza continued to visit her in the looted house, whose furnishings were reduced to three leather stools that the thieves forgot in the kitchen, and the contents of the bedroom where the two of them had been. But he did not visit her as often as before, not because of the desolation in the house, as she supposed and as she said to him, but because of the novelty of a mule-drawn trolley at the turn of the new century, which proved to be a prodigious and original nest of free-flying little birds. He rode it four times a day, twice to go to the office, twice to return home, and sometimes when his reading was real, and most of the time when it was pretense, he would take the first steps, at least, toward a future tryst. Later, when Uncle Leo XII put at his disposal a carriage drawn by two little gray mules with golden trappings, just like the one that belonged to President Rafael Núñez, he would long for those times on the trolley as the most fruitful of all his adventures in falconry. He was right: there is no worse enemy of secret love than a carriage waiting at the door. In fact, he almost always left it hidden at his house and made his hawkish rounds On foot so that he would not leave wheel marks in the dust. That is why he evoked with such great nostalgia the old trolley with its emaciated mules covered with sores, in which a sideways glance was all one needed to know where love was. However, in the midst of so many tender memories, he could not elude his recollection of a helpless little bird whose name he never knew and with whom he spent no more than half a frenetic night, but that had been enough to ruin the innocent rowdiness of Carnival for him for the rest of his life.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨继续到被洗劫一空的家里去看她，如今这里的家具只剩下窃贼忘在厨房的三只皮凳子，以及他们当时所在的卧室里的东西。不过，他去看她的次数不像以往那么多了，倒不是因为家当失窃——她曾这样猜想并当面质问过他——而是因为新世纪之初出现了骡子拉的轨道车这种新鲜事物。这种车被他视作盛产零散小鸟的原始巢穴，他每天乘坐四次，两次去办公室，两次回家。有时，倒也当真在车上读点什么，但大部分时候都是在假装阅读，伺机为日后的幽会建立起最初的联系。后来，莱昂十二叔叔给了他一辆由两头棕色骡子拉的车，骡子身披金色披挂，就跟为拉法埃尔·努涅斯总统拉车的骡子一样，但他仍旧怀念以前乘坐轨道车的日子，认为那是自己猎艳成果最为丰厚的时期。他是对的：对于秘密的爱情而言，没有什么比等在门口的车子更危险的敌人了。既如此，他便几乎总是把车藏在家里，走着去展开他的新一轮猎捕行动，以免车轮在尘土上留下痕迹。所以，每当他想起那些由毛皮斑驳的瘦骡拉着的老式轨道车时，都无比怀念，在那样的车上，他只需瞟上一眼，就能看出哪儿蕴含着爱情。在无数动人的回忆之中，他最无法忘怀的是与某只无依无靠的小鸟间的一段故事。他不知道她的名字，因为他们只在一起度过了半个疯狂的夜晚，但仅仅这半个夜晚就足以让他余生都对狂欢节上无知的混乱心有余悸了。
She could not believe it. The only objects left in the house were the lamps attached to the walls. All the rest, the signed furniture, the Indian rugs, the statues and the hand-woven tapestries, the countless trinkets made of precious stones and metals, everything that had made hers one of the most pleasant and best decorated houses in the city, everything, even the sacred cockatoo, everything had vanished. It had been carried out through the sea terrace without disturbing their love. All that was left were empty rooms with the four open windows, and a message painted on the rear wall: This is what you get for fucking around. Captain Rosendo de la Rosa could never understand why Ausencia Santander did not report the robbery, or try to get in touch with the dealers in stolen goods, or permit her misfortune to be mentioned again.
她不敢相信眼前的一切。家中唯独剩下的就只有几盏吊灯了。其余的，诸如带签名的家具、印度地毯、雕塑、戈博兰挂毯，以及无数件珍贵的石头和金属小摆设，所有那些曾让她的家成为全城最赏心悦目、装饰最精美的家之一的东西，所有的一切，甚至连那只神圣的白鹦鹉在内，全都不翼而飞了。东西是从观海露台搬走的，丝毫没有惊扰他们的恩爱。现在，只剩下空空如也的客厅、四扇敞开的窗子，以及靠里的墙上用粗刷子写下的一行字：这就是淫乱之人的下场。罗森多·德拉罗萨船长永远也无法理解奥森西娅·桑坦德尔为什么不去报案，不试图跟那些销赃的商人们联系一下，甚至连提也不让别人再提她这件倒霉事。
She had attracted his attention on the trolley for the fearlessness with which she traveled through the riotous public celebration. She could not have been more than twenty years old, and she did not seem to share the spirit of Carnival, unless she was disguised as an invalid: her hair was very light, long, and straight, hanging loose over her shoulders, and she wore a tunic of plain, unadorned linen. She was completely removed from the confusion of music in the streets, the handfuls of rice powder, the showers of aniline thrown at the passengers on the trolley, whose mules were whitened with cornstarch and wore flowered hats during those three days of madness. Taking advantage of the confusion, Florentino Ariza invited her to have an ice with him, because he did not think he could ask for anything more. She looked at him without surprise. She said: “I am happy to accept, but I warn you that I am crazy.” He laughed at her witticism, and took her to see the parade of floats from the balcony of the ice cream shop. Then he put on a rented cape, and the two of them joined the dancing in the Plaza of the Customhouse, and enjoyed themselves like newborn sweethearts, for her indifference went to the opposite extreme in the uproar of the night: she danced like a professional, she was imaginative and daring in her revelry, and she had devastating charm.
在轨道车上，她面对游行人群的喧闹所表现出的无动于衷吸引了他。她应该还不到二十岁，若不是装扮成了一个残疾人，真看不出她对狂欢节有丝毫热情。她的长发又亮又滑，自然地披在肩上，身上是一件没有装饰的普通麻布长袍。街上音乐嘈杂，人们互相撒着一把把大米粉，每当轨道车经过时，人们都往乘客身上泼洒颜料，在那疯狂的三天，轨道车的骡子也用淀粉涂成了白色，还戴上了花环。然而对这一切，她仿佛全然无视。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨趁着混乱，邀请她去吃冰激凌，因为怕她不会接受更多的要求。她看了看他，没有表现出丝毫惊讶，说：“我很乐意接受，但我要先提醒您，我是个疯子。”对这个出其不意的回答，他笑了，接着便把她带到冰激凌店的阳台去看彩车游行。之后，他穿上租来的斗篷，两人钻进海关广场跳舞的人群。他们在一起陶醉的样子就像一对新结合的恋人，因为她的冷漠在夜晚的喧闹中一扫而光，转向了另一个极端：她跳得像专业舞者一样，在人群中显得格外大胆且富有想象力，具有一种令人倾倒的魅力。
“You don’t know the trouble you’ve gotten into with me,” she shouted, laughing in the fever of Carnival. “I’m a crazy woman from the insane asylum.”
“你不知道和我搅在一起的麻烦。”在狂欢节的狂热中，她一边笑得要死，一边喊道，“我是疯人院里的疯子。”
For Florentino Ariza, that night was a return to the innocent unruliness of adolescence, when he had not yet been wounded by love. But he knew, more from hearsay than from personal experience, that such easy happiness could not last very long. And so before the night began to degenerate, as it always did after prizes were distributed for the best costumes, he suggested to the girl that they go to the lighthouse to watch the sunrise. She accepted with pleasure, but she wanted to wait until after they had given out the prizes.
对弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨来说，那晚仿佛回到了年轻时还未遭遇爱情不幸的纯真胡闹之中。然而他知道，易得的幸福无法持久，这点体会更多地是源自教训而非经验。夜晚的狂欢将在颁出最佳化装奖后开始消退，在那之前，他向姑娘提议到灯塔去看黎明。她高兴地答应了，但说要等到颁奖之后。
Florentino Ariza was certain that the delay saved his life. In fact, the girl had indicated to him that they should leave for the lighthouse, when she was seized by two guards and a nurse from Divine Shepherdess Asylum. They had been looking for her since her escape at three o’clock that afternoon — they and the entire police force. She had decapitated a guard and seriously wounded two others with a machete that she had snatched away from the gardener because she wanted to go dancing at Carnival. It had not occurred to anyone that she might be dancing in the streets; they thought she would be hiding in one of the many houses where they had searched even the cisterns.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨很肯定，正是她的拖延救了自己一命。当姑娘最终向他示意一起去灯塔的时候，圣牧羊女疯人院的两名看守和一名女护士一下子扑到了她的身上。自从她下午三点逃跑后，他们就一直在找她，不只是他们，城里所有的警察也都在找。她用一把从园丁那里抢来的砍刀，砍掉了一名守卫的脑袋，又重伤了另外两名，只因为她想出来到狂欢节上跳舞。但谁也没想到她就在大街上，还都以为她会藏在某幢房子里，他们地毯式地搜查了无数幢房子，甚至连地下雨水池都没放过。
It was not easy to take her away. She defended herself with a pair of gardening shears that she had hidden in her bodice, and six men were needed to put her in the strait jacket while the crowd jammed into the Plaza of the Customhouse applauded and whistled with glee in the belief that the bloody capture was one of many Carnival farces. Florentino Ariza was heartbroken, and beginning on Ash Wednesday he would walk down Divine Shepherdess Street with a box of English chocolates for her. He would stand and look at the inmates, who shouted all kinds of profanities and compliments at him through the windows, and he would show them the box of chocolates in case luck would have it that she, too, might look out at him through the iron bars. But he never saw her. Months later, as he was getting off the mule-drawn trolley, a little girl walking with her father asked him for a piece of chocolate from the box he was carrying in his hand. Her father reprimanded her and begged Florentino Ariza’s pardon. But he gave the whole box to the child, thinking that the action would redeem him from all bitterness, and he soothed the father with a pat on the back.
带走她可真不容易。她用一把藏在贴身背心里的修枝剪自卫，六个男人一起才给她穿上了紧身衣，拥挤在海关广场的人群开心地鼓掌哄笑，以为这血腥逮捕的场面是狂欢节刻意上演的无数闹剧之一。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨心痛如绞，从圣灰星期三开始就一直徘徊在圣牧羊女大街，手里拿着一盒要送给她的英国巧克力。他看着那些被囚禁的疯女人从窗口向他嚷出各种辱骂或哀求的话，而他向她们晃着手中的巧克力，希望能恰巧碰上她也出现在铁窗前。但他始终没有再见过她。几个月后，他走下骡子轨道车时，一个由父亲领着的小女孩向他索要盒中的一块巧克力。父亲责备了她，并向弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨道歉。可他却把整盒巧克力都给了小女孩，期望这个举动能帮他从所有的痛苦中解脱出来。他拍了拍那位父亲的肩膀，让他放心。
“They were for a love that has gone all to hell,” he said.
“它原本是为一份已经见了鬼的爱情准备的。”他说。
As a kind of compensation from fate, it was also in the mule-drawn trolley that Florentino Ariza met Leona Cassiani, who was the true woman in his life although neither of them ever knew it and they never made love. He had sensed her before he saw her as he was going home on the trolley at five o’clock; it was a tangible look that touched him as if it were a finger. He raised his eyes and saw her, at the far end of the trolley, but standing out with great clarity from the other passengers. She did not look away. On the contrary: she continued to look at him with such boldness that he could not help thinking what he thought: black, young, pretty, but a whore beyond the shadow of a doubt. He rejected her from his life, because he could not conceive of anything more contemptible than paying for love: he had never done it.
仿佛命运要给他以补偿，同样是在骡子轨道车上，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨认识了莱昂娜·卡西亚尼。她是他生命中真正的女人，尽管两人始终都不知道这一点，也从未做过爱。他乘五点钟的轨道车回家，在看见她之前便感觉到了她的存在：那是一道结结实实的目光，仿佛一根手指似的触动了他。他抬起眼，看见她坐在车子的另一端，在乘客中显得十分出众。她并没有把目光移开，而是恰恰相反，继续无所避忌地盯着他。毫无疑问，他不能不这样想，这个年轻漂亮的黑女人是个妓女。他决意不去理会她，因为他想象不出有什么比花钱买爱情更可耻：他从没有这样做过。
Florentino Ariza got off at the Plaza of the Carriages, which was the end of the line, hurried through the labyrinth of commerce because his mother was expecting him at six, and when he emerged on the other side of the crowd, he heard the tapping heels of a loose woman on the paving stones and turned around so that he would be certain of what he already knew: it was she, dressed like the slave girls in engravings, with a skirt of veils that was raised with the gesture of a dancer when she stepped over the puddles in the streets, a low-cut top that left her shoulders bare, a handful of colored necklaces, and a white turban. He knew them from the transient hotel. It often happened that at six in the afternoon they were still eating breakfast, and then all they could do was to use sex as if it were a bandit’s knife and put it to the throat of the first man they passed on the street: your prick or your life. As a final test, Florentino Ariza changed direction and went down the deserted Oil Lamp Alley, and she followed, coming closer and closer to him. Then he stopped, turned around, blocked her way on the sidewalk, and leaned on his umbrella with both hands. She stood facing him.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨在轨道车的终点站车站广场下了车，然后飞快地消失在商业区的迷宫之中，因为母亲在等他六点钟回去。而当他从人群的另一头穿出来时，身后传来了女人的高跟鞋踩在石砖上的欢快声响，他回过头去，证实了自己早已猜到的事：是她。她装扮得和版画上的女奴一样，穿一条荷叶长裙，走过街上的水坑时要用跳舞般的姿势提起裙角，领口开得很大，露出了双肩，脖子上戴着一大串五颜六色的项链，头上包着白色头巾。这样的女人他在小旅馆见过。她们常常在下午六点才只吃过早餐，于是别无他法，只能拿色相来充当拦路劫匪的尖刀，把它架在街上遇到的第一个男人脖上：要么一夜良宵，要么性命不保。为了做最后的验证，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨掉转方向，钻进了空无一人的麦仙翁巷，而她仍旧跟着他，且越跟越近。于是，他停下脚，转过身，双手拄着雨伞，在人行道上挡住了她的去路。她在他面前站住了。
“You made a mistake, good-looking,” he said. “I don’t do that.”
“美人儿，你弄错了，”他说，“我是不会就范的。”
“Of course you do,” she said. “One can see it in your face.”
“您一定会，”她说，“从您脸上就看得出来。”
Florentino Ariza remembered a phrase from his childhood, some thing that the family doctor, his godfather, had said regarding his chronic constipation: “The world is divided into those who can shit and those who cannot.” On the basis of this dogma the Doctor had elaborated an entire theory of character, which he considered more accurate than astrology. But with what he had learned over the years, Florentino Ariza stated it another way: “The world is divided into those who screw and those who do not.” He distrusted those who did not: when they strayed from the straight and narrow, it was something so unusual for them that they bragged about love as if they had just invented it. Those who did it often, on the other hand, lived for that alone. They felt so good that their lips were sealed as if they were tombs, because the y knew that their lives depended on their discretion. They never spoke of their exploits, they confided in no one, they feigned indifference to the point where they earned the reputation of being impotent, or frigid, or above all timid fairies, as in the case of Florentino Ariza. But they took pleasure in the error because the error protected them. They formed a secret society, whose members recognized each other all over the world without need of a common language, which is why Florentino Ariza was not surprised by the girl’s reply: she was one of them, and therefore she knew that he knew that she knew.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨想起了从小听家庭医生，也就是他的教父，就他的长期便秘发表的一句言论：“世上的人分两种，大便通畅的和大便不通畅的。”在这一信条的基础上，医生提出了一整套关于性格的理论，自认为比星象学还要准确。而弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨随着阅历的丰富，从另一角度改写了这个理论：“世上的人分两种，会勾搭的和不会勾搭的。”他不信任后面这种人：他们一旦越轨，便觉得这件事太不可思议，于是四处炫耀爱情，就好像那是他们刚刚发明出来的似的。而经常做这种事的人恰恰相反，他们活着就是为了这个。他们感觉良好，也守口如瓶，因为知道谨言慎行是性命攸关的大事。他们从不谈论自己的丰功伟绩，也不向任何人吐露秘密，反而装出一副对这种事漠不关心的样子，以致常常招来性无能、性冷淡，甚至不男不女的名声，就像弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨这样。但他们乐意将错就错，因为这种误解同样也能保护他们。他们是秘而不宣的共济会组织，全世界的成员都能认出彼此，根本不需要讲同一种语言。因此，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨对姑娘的回答并不惊讶：她是他们中的一员，而她也很清楚，他知道她知道。
It was the great mistake of his life, as his conscience was to remind him every hour of every day until the final day of his life. What she wanted from him was not love, least of all love that was paid for, but a job, any kind of job, at any salary, in the River Company of the Caribbean. Florentino Ariza felt so ashamed of his own conduct that he took her to the head of Personnel, who gave her the lowest-level job in the General Section, which she performed with seriousness, modesty, and dedication for three years.
这是他一生的错误：他的良心在此后每天的每时每刻都这么提醒他，直到他生命的末日。她想向他恳求的不是爱情，更加不是用金钱来交换的爱情，而是加勒比河运公司里的一份工作，不管做什么，也不管工资如何，随便什么样的工作都行。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨对自己的行为万分羞愧，于是把她带到了人事部门的头儿那里。头儿在总务处给她安排了一个最低等的职位，而她却抱着严肃认真、谦卑奉献的态度，在这个岗位上一干就是三年。
Ever since its founding, the R. C. C. had had its offices across from the river dock, and it had nothing in common with the port for ocean liners on the opposite side of the bay, or with the market pier on Las Ánimas Bay. The building was of wood, with a sloping tin roof, a single long balcony with columns at the front, and windows, covered with wire mesh, on all four sides through which one had complete views of the boats at the dock as if they were paintings hanging on the wall. When the German founders built it, they painted the tin roof red and the wooden walls a brilliant white, so that the building itself bore some resemblance to a riverboat. Later it was painted all blue, and at the time that Florentino Ariza began to work for the company it was a dusty shed of no definite color, and on the rusting roof there were patches of new tin plates over the original ones. Behind the building, in a gravel patio surrounded by chicken wire, stood two large warehouses of more recent construction, and at the back there was a closed sewer pipe, dirty and foul-smelling, where the refuse of a half a century of river navigation lay rotting: the debris of historic boats, from the early one with a single smokestack, christened by Simón Bolívar, to some so recent that they had electric fans in the cabins. Most of them had been dismantled for materials to be used in building other boats, but many were in such good condition that it seemed possible to give them a coat of paint and launch them without frightening away the iguanas or disturbing the foliage of the large yellow flowers that made them even more nostalgic.
从创建之日起，CFC的办公室就位于内河码头的对面，那里与海湾另一侧的远洋轮船港口截然不同，也不同于灵魂湾的市场泊船处。那是一座木制楼房，双坡锌顶，只在正面有一个用石柱支撑的长长的阳台。房子四面都有装着铁丝网的窗子，从屋里就能看到码头上停着的所有船只，与看挂在墙上的图表无异。当初建造房子时，德国先驱们把锌顶漆成了红色，四周的木墙则涂了耀眼的白，为的是让整座楼看上去就像一条内河船。后来，人们又把它整个儿漆成了蓝色，而到弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨进公司时，这座楼已变成了一个落满灰尘、说不清是什么颜色的棚屋，生锈的屋顶上，补丁摞补丁。楼后是一个砂土院子，围着鸡笼用的那种六角网眼铁丝网，里面有两个较新的大仓库，仓库后面则是一条堵死了的下水道，又脏又臭，半个世纪的河运垃圾都在那里腐烂：各种古旧船只的残骸，从西蒙·玻利瓦尔剪彩下水的原始单烟囱船，到舱室装有电风扇的较新的船。其中大部分已被拆散，零部件用到了其他船上，但也有不少还相当完好，似乎只要动手刷刷漆，便可以下海航行，都用不着吓跑船上的鬣蜥，或除去那些让这一条条旧船看上去更加伤怀的茂盛的大黄花。
The Administrative Section was on the upper floor of the building, in small but comfortable and well-appointed offices similar to the cabins on the boats, for they had been built not by civil architects but by naval engineers. At the end of the corridor, like any employee, Uncle Leo XII dispatched his business in an office similar to all the others, the one exception being that every morning he found a glass vase filled with sweet-smelling flowers on his desk. On the ground floor was the Passenger Section, with a waiting room that had rustic benches and a count er for selling tickets and handling baggage. Last of all was the confusing General Section, its name alone suggesting the vagueness of its functions, where problems that had not been solved elsewhere in the company went to die an ignominious death. There sat Leona Cassiani, lost behind a student’s desk surrounded by corn stacked for shipping and unresolved papers, on the day that Uncle Leo XII himself went to see what the devil he could think of to make the General Section good for something. After three ho urs of questions, theoretical assumptions, and concrete evidence, with all the employees in the middle of the room, he returned to his office tormented by the certainty that instead of a solution to so many problems, he had found just the opposite: new and different problems with no solution.
楼顶层是管理处，一间间的办公室都很小，但很舒服，设备齐全，就像轮船上的舱室，因为它们并非由城市建筑师而是由造船工程师设计的。走廊的尽头，莱昂十二叔叔就像一名普通员工，在一间和所有人的办公室相同的屋里办公，唯一的区别，就是他每天清早都能在自己的办公桌上看到一束插在玻璃瓶里的随便什么种类的芳香四溢的鲜花。底层是旅客接待处，先是一间摆放着粗糙板凳的候船室，以及一个售票和行李托运的柜台。再往里才是混乱的总务处，单是这名字就给人一种职能模糊的感觉，那些其余部门无法解决的问题最终就送到这里来不了了之。那天，莱昂十二叔叔亲自来此，想看看到底能不能想出什么见鬼的办法，好让总务处起点作用，而当时，莱昂娜·卡西亚尼就默默地坐在一张堆满了玉米袋和无法处理的文件的小桌后面。在对满屋子全体职员进行了三个小时的询问、理论假设和具体调查后，莱昂十二叔叔懊恼地回到自己的办公室，因为这一趟不仅确定了那种种问题根本找不到解决方案，而且雪上加霜，又发现了各种无法解决的新问题。
Uncle Leo XII did not have the slightest idea who Leona Cassiani was, and he could not remember having seen anyone who could be Leona Cassiani at the meeting on the previous afternoon, but when he read the memorandum he called her to his office and talked with her behind closed doors for two hours. They spoke about everything, in accordance with the method he used to learn about people. The memorandum showed simple common sense, and her suggestion, in fact, would produce the desired result. But Uncle Leo XII was not interested in that: he was interested in her. What most attracted his attention was that her only education after elementary school had been in the School of Millinery. Moreover, she was learning English at home, using an accelerated method with no teacher, and for the past three months she had been taking evening classes in typing, a new kind of work with a wonderful future, as they used to say about the telegraph and before that the steam engine.
莱昂十二叔叔完全不知道莱昂娜·卡西亚尼是谁，也记不起前一天下午的会议中见过的哪个人可能是她。但看完备忘录后，他把她叫到自己的办公室，和她闭门交谈了两小时。他们天南地北地什么都聊，这是他了解人的一贯做法。那份备忘录显露了质朴的常识，解决方案也达到了预期的效果，但这些对莱昂十二叔叔来说都不重要，重要的是她本人。最引起他注意的，是她小学毕业以后，就只在制帽学校学习过。但在此之外，她正用一种速成法在家自学英语，三个月前还开始上夜校学习打字，这可是一门大有前途的全新职业，就像从前的电报业和更早时期的蒸汽机行当一样。
The next day, when Florentino Ariza came into his office, he found a memorandum from Leona Cassiani, with the request that he study it and then show it to his uncle if he thought it appropriate. She was the only one who had not said a word during the inspection the previous afternoon. She had remained silent in full awareness of the worth of her position as a charity employee, but in the memorandum she noted that she had said nothing not because of negligence but out of respect for the hierarchies in the section. It had an alarming simplicity. Uncle Leo XII had proposed a thorough reorganization, but Leona Cassiani did not agree, for the simple reason that in reality the General Section did not exist: it was the dumping ground for annoying but minor problems that the other sections wanted to get rid of. As a consequence, the solution was to eliminate the General Section and return the problems to the sections where they had originated, to be solved there.
第二天，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨走进办公室，看见了莱昂娜·卡西亚尼提交的一份备忘录，请求他研究一下，如果觉得合适就转呈他的叔叔。在前一天下午的视察中，她是唯一一个一言未发的人。她心里始终清楚自己是因他人的施舍而受雇，在备忘录中，她表明自己没有发言并非因为漠不关心，而是出于对本部门领导的尊重。她的建议之坦率令人惊讶。莱昂十二叔叔本是想将总务处彻底改组，但莱昂娜·卡西亚尼的想法恰恰相反，理由很简单，那就是事实上总务处根本不存在：它不过是个垃圾站，收容了其他部门推卸掉的各种麻烦而又无关紧要的问题。因此，解决办法就是撤销总务处，将问题返回原部门解决。
Florentino Ariza took this as one of Uncle Leo XII’s typical jokes, but the next day he found himself without the carriage that had been assigned to him six months earlier, and that was taken back now so that he could continue to look for hidden talent on the trolleys. Leona Cassiani, for her part, soon overcame her initial scruples, and she revealed what she had kept hidden with so much astuteness during her first three years. In three more years she had taken control of everything, and in the next four she stood on the threshold of the General Secretaryship, but she refused to cross it because it was only one step below Florentino Ariza. Until then she had taken orders from him, and she wanted to continue to do so, although the fact of the matter was that Florentino himself did not realize that he took orders from her. Indeed, he had done nothing more on the Board of Directors than follow her suggestions, which helped him to move up despite the traps set by his secret enemies.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨以为这只是莱昂十二叔叔的一句典型的玩笑话，但第二天他便发现六个月前指派给自己的那辆车不见了，就为了让他继续在轨道车上寻找隐藏的人才。至于莱昂娜·卡西亚尼，则很快放下最初的顾忌，把前三年深藏不露的所有本领都拿了出来。又一个三年过后，她已掌控了一切，再过四年，她与总秘书的位置就只一步之遥了，但她拒绝接受这个职位，因为那只比弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨低一级。到那时为止，她一直都听命于他，她愿意继续这样下去，尽管真相并非如此：就连弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨自己也没有注意到，其实是他在听命于她。事实上，他在董事会中不过是依照她的建议行事，完全是她帮他战胜了隐藏的敌人设下的种种圈套，节节高升。
“Well, then, go back to the trolley and bring me every girl like her that you find,” his uncle said. “With two or three more, we’ll salvage your galleon.”
“那么你就再到轨道车上去，把所有像她一样的姑娘通通给我带回来。”叔叔对他说，“再有两三个这样的，我们就能把你那艘大帆船捞上来了。”
When she left the meeting, Uncle Leo XII had already begun to call her what he would always call her: my namesake Leona. He had decided to eliminate with the stroke of a pen the troublesome section and distribute the problems so that they could be solved by the people who had created them, in accordance with Leona Cassiani’s suggestion, and he had created a new position for her, which had no title or specific duties but in effect was his Personal Assistant. That afternoon, after the inglorious burial of the General Section, Uncle Leo XII asked Florentino Ariza where he had found Leona Cassiani, and he answered with the truth.
等她谈完话走出去时，莱昂十二叔叔已经开始叫她“同名人[4]莱昂娜”了，后来就一直这样称呼她。根据莱昂娜·卡西亚尼的建议，他决定当机立断撤销使人头疼的总务处，把问题交回那些制造问题的人去解决。他为她专门设立了一个既无名称也无具体职能的岗位，实际上就是当他的私人助理。那天下午，总务处被无声无息地埋葬后，莱昂十二叔叔问弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨是从什么地方把莱昂娜·卡西亚尼找来的，他据实做了回答。（注：[4]莱昂十二叔叔的名字León和莱昂娜的名字Leona在西班牙语中是同一个名词的阴阳变位，分别代表“公狮”和“母狮”。）
“Make no mistake,” she said to him. “I will withdraw from all this whenever you wish, but think it over carefully.”
“您别弄错了，”她对他说，“只要您愿意，我随时可以退出，但您可要想清楚。”
Leona Cassiani had a diabolical talent for handling secrets, and she always knew how to be where she had to be at the right time. She was dynamic and quiet, with a wise sweetness. But when it was indispensable she would, with sorrow in her heart, give free rein to a character of solid iron. However, she never did that for herself. Her only objective was to clear the ladder at any cost, with blood if necessary, so that Florentino Ariza could move up to the position he had proposed for himself without calculating his own strength very well. She would have done this in any event, of course, because she had an indomitable will to power, but the truth was that she did it consciously, out of simple gratitude. Her determination was so great that Florentino Ariza himself lost his way in her schemes, and on one unfortunate occasion he attempted to block her, thinking that she was trying to do the same to him. Leona Cassiani put him in his place.
莱昂娜·卡西亚尼具有一种魔鬼般的才能，能够操控秘密，总是在合适的时机出现在合适的地方。她精力充沛，沉默寡言，温柔聪慧。但在必要的时候，尽管要忍受灵魂的痛苦，她也会放任自己施展铁腕。然而，她从不会为了自己这样做。她唯一的目的，是不惜一切代价扫清障碍，别无他法时甚至不惜流血，好让弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨扶摇直上，坐到他自不量力想要坐到的位置上去。当然，出于一种无法控制的权力欲，她无论如何也会这么干，但事实是，她有意识地做这一切，纯粹是为了报恩。她的决心之坚定，就连弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨也一度认不清她的意图。曾有那么一个不幸的时刻，他试图挡她的路，因为他认为是她在挡自己的路。莱昂娜·卡西亚尼让他重新清醒过来。
Florentino Ariza, who in fact had never thought about it, thought about it then, as well as he could, and he surrendered his weapons. The truth is that in the midst of that sordid internecine battle in a company in perpetual crisis, in the midst of his disasters as a tireless falconer and the more and more uncertain dream of Fermina Daza, the impassive Florentino Ariza had not had a moment of inner peace as he confronted the fascinating spectacle of that fierce black woman smeared with shit and love in the fever of battle. Many times he regretted in secret that she had not been in fact what he thought she was on the afternoon he met her, so that he could wipe his ass with his principles and make love to her even if it cost nuggets of shining gold. For Leona Cassiani was still the woman she had been that afternoon on the trolley, with the same clothes, worthy of an impetuous runaway slave, her mad turbans, her earrings and bracelets made of bone, her necklaces, her rings with fake stones on every finger: a lioness in the streets. The years had changed her appearance very little, and that little became her very well. She moved in splendid maturity, her feminine charms were even more exciting, and her ardent African body was becoming more compact. Florentino Ariza had made no propositions to her in ten years, a hard penance for his original error, and she had helped him in everything except that.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的确从未想过，这个时候他尽可能清醒地想了一想，于是向她缴械投降。事实上，在一直危机四伏的公司里那场肮脏残忍的内斗中，在他战战兢兢却又一发不可收拾的猎捕行动中，在对费尔明娜·达萨越来越渺茫的幻想中，面对这个勇敢的黑女人所做的壮举，面对她在那白热化的斗争中惹上的一身污秽又一身情爱，表面上无动于衷的弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨内心不曾有过一刻平静。很多时候他都暗自伤心，只为她当真不是他认识她的那天下午所想象的那种女人，不然他早就把自己的原则抛到脑后，哪怕要付出实打实的金疙瘩，也要去和她做·爱。莱昂娜·卡西亚尼依旧和那天下午在轨道车上时一模一样，穿着那身叛逃奴隶似的俗丽衣服，裹着疯狂的头巾，戴着骨头耳环和手镯，还有那一大串项链和满手的假宝石戒指：完全是个街头荡妇。岁月在她的外表没有刻下多少痕迹，反而适当地增添了她的姿色。她正值成熟丰润的年龄，散发出的女性魅力比以往更令人躁动，那热情似火的非洲女人的身体也更显丰满结实。十年中，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨没有再向她示过好，以此为他最初犯下的过错赎罪，而她帮他做了一切，却唯独没在这件事上帮他。
“Tell me something, lionlady of my soul,” he said. “When are we ever going to stop this?”
“请告诉我，我亲爱的母狮，”他说，“我们什么时候才能走出这种困境？”
“Ay, Florentino Ariza,” she said, “I’ve been sitting here for ten years waiting for you to ask me that.”
“唉，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨，”她对他说，“十年来，我一直坐在这里等你问我这句话。”
One night when he had worked late, something he did often after his mother’s death, Florentino Ariza was about to leave when he saw a light burning in Leona Cassiani’s office. He opened the door without knocking, and there she was: alone at her desk, absorbed, serious, with the new eyeglasses that gave her an academic air. Florentino Ariza realized with joyful fear tha t the two of them were alone in the building, the piers were deserted, the city asleep, the night eternal over the dark sea, and the horn mournful on the ship that would not dock for another hour. Florentino Ariza leaned both hands on his umbrella, just as he had done in Oil Lamp Alley when he barred her way, only now he did it to hide the trembling in his knees.
一天晚上，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨工作到很晚——母亲去世后，他常常如此——正要回家时，他看见莱昂娜·卡西亚尼办公室的灯还亮着。他没有敲便推开了门。她果然在那里：独自一人坐在办公桌前，神情严肃，陷入沉思，新配的眼镜让她看上去像个学究。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨又惊又喜地发现这座房子里只有他们两人，码头上也空无一人，城市在沉睡，无尽的黑夜笼罩着阴郁的大海，一艘一小时后才能到达的轮船发出悲凄的哀号。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨双手拄着雨伞，就像当年在麦仙翁巷挡住她的去路时一样，只不过现在他这样做是为了掩盖自己膝盖的颤抖。
She took off her glasses without surprise, with absolute self-control, and dazzled him with her solar laugh. It was the first time she used the familiar form of address with him.
她没有惊讶，神情自若地摘下眼镜，阳光般的笑声使他头晕目眩。她还从未用“你”称呼过他。
It was too late: the opportunity had been there with her in the mule-drawn trolley, it had always been with her there on the chair where she was sitting, but now it was gone forever. The truth was that after all the dirty tricks she had done for him, after so much sordidness endured for him, she had moved on in life and was far beyond his twenty-year advantage in age: she had grown too old for him. She loved him so much that instead of deceiving him she preferred to continue loving him, although she had to let him know in a brutal manner.
已经太迟了：机会曾经就在那辆骡子轨道车上，后来也一直在她所坐的这把椅子上，而现在却已一去不复返了。事实上，在为他干了那么多见不得人的卑鄙事，为他忍受了那么多肮脏的勾当之后，她的生命已经走到了他的前面，尽管他原本比她年长二十岁：她为他衰老了。她是那么地爱他，她愿意继续爱他而非欺骗他，但她不得不以一种残酷的方式点醒他。
“No,” she said to him. “I would feel as if I were going to bed with the son I never had.”
“不，”她对他说，“那样我会觉得我是在和自己的儿子睡觉，虽然这个儿子并不是我生的。”
Florentino Ariza was left with the nagging suspicion that this was not her last word. He believed that when a woman says no, she is waiting to be urged before making her final decision, but with her he could not risk making the same mistake twice. He withdrew without protest, and even with a certain grace, which was not easy for him. From that night on, any cloud there might have been between them was dissipated without bitterness, and Florentino Ariza understood at last that it is possible to be a woman’s friend and not go to bed with her.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨如鲠在喉，因为最终的拒绝竟不是出自自己之口。他一贯以为，当一个女人说“不”的时候，是在等待对方的坚持，然后再做出最后的决定，但事情到她这里就完全不同了：他不能冒险再犯第二次错误。他很有风度地退了出去，甚至还带着一点儿实属难得的优雅。从那晚起，他们之间可能存在的任何一点阴影都不费吹灰之力地消散了，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨终于明白，不跟女人睡觉，也能成为她的朋友。
Leona Cassiani was the only human being to whom Florentino Ariza was tempted to reveal the secret of Fermina Daza. The few people who had known were beginning to forget for reasons over which they had no control. Three of them were, beyond the shadow of any doubt, in the grave: his mother, whose memory had been erased long before she died; Gala Placidia, who had died of old age in the service of one who had been like a daughter to her; and the unforgettable Escolástica Daza, the woman who had brought him the first love letter he had ever received in his life, hidden in her prayerbook, and who could not still be alive after so many years. Lorenzo Daza (no one knew if he was alive or dead) might have revealed the secret to Sister Franca de la Luz when he was trying to stop Fermina Daza’s expulsion, but it was unlikely that it had gone any further. That left the eleven telegraph operators in Hildebranda Sanchez’s province who had handled telegrams with their complete names and exact addresses, and Hildebranda Sánchez herself, and her court of indomitable cousins.
莱昂娜·卡西亚尼是弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨曾试图向其透露费尔明娜·达萨秘密的唯一一人。由于不可抗力，为数不多的几个知情人都已经开始淡忘这件事了。毫无疑问，他们中的三个已把它带进了坟墓：一是他的母亲，她在去世前很久就把这件事从记忆中抹掉了；二是加拉·普拉西迪娅，她服侍着像自己孩子一样的女主人，直至善终；三是令人难忘的埃斯科拉斯蒂卡·达萨，是她把他人生中收到的第一封情书夹在一本弥撒经书中带给他，而如今过去了那么多年，她不可能还活在世上。此外还有洛伦索·达萨，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨不知道他是死是活，他当年为了避免女儿被开除，或许曾将此事透露给弗兰卡·德拉路斯修女，但由此再往外传的可能性不大。再者就是伊尔德布兰达·桑切斯所在的遥远省份的十一位电报员，他们发报时是知道他们俩的全名和准确地址的。最后，就是伊尔德布兰达·桑切斯和她那帮桀骜不驯的表姐妹了。
What Florentino Ariza did not know was that Dr. Juvenal Urbino should have been included on the list. Hildebranda Sánchez had revealed the secret to him during one of her many visits in the early years. But she did so in such a casual way and at such an inopportune moment that it did not go in one of Dr. Urbino’s ears and out the other, as she thought; it did not go in at all. Hildebranda had mentioned Florentino Ariza as one of the secret poets who, in her opinion, might win the Poetic Festival. Dr. Urbino could not remember who he was, and she told him — she did not need to, but there was no hint of malice in it — that he was Fermina Daza’s only sweetheart before she married. She told him, convinced that it had been something so innocent and ephemeral that in fact it was rather touching. Dr. Urbino replied without looking at her: “I did not know that fellow was a poet.” And then he wiped him from his memory, because among other things, his profession had accustomed him to the ethical management of forgetfulness.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨不知道，其实胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生也应该算在其中。伊尔德布兰达·桑切斯在最初几年对本城的频繁拜访中，曾有一次向他透露了这个秘密。但她是偶然且在一个不适当的时候说起的，乌尔比诺医生甚至不是如她所想象的那样左耳进右耳出，而是压根儿就没从任何一个耳朵听进去。原来，伊尔德布兰达是在讲到可能在花会上夺魁的诗人时提到弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的，她认为他是被埋没了的诗人之一。乌尔比诺医生怎么也想不起这人是谁，而她则毫无必要却也没有半点恶意地告诉他，那是费尔明娜·达萨婚前的唯一一位恋人。她告诉他，是因为她相信这件事是那么的纯真而且短暂，以至于它所激发的情绪不过是令人感动罢了。乌尔比诺医生看都没看她就答道：“我倒不知道那家伙还是个诗人。”随即，他便从记忆中将他同其他事情一起抹掉了，因为他的职业早已让他形成了某种道德准则，那就是适时地选择忘记。
Florentino Ariza observed that, with the exception of his mother, the keepers of the secret belonged to Fermina Daza’s world. In his, he was alone with the crushing weight of a burden that he had often needed to share, but until then there had been no one worthy of so much trust. Leona Cassiani was the only one, and all he needed was the opportunity and the means. This was what he was thinking on the hot summer afternoon when Dr. Juvenal Urbino climbed the steep stairs of the R. C. C., paused on each step in order to survive the three o’clock heat, appeared in Florentino Ariza’s office, panting and soaked with perspiration down to his trousers, and gasped with his last breath: “I believe a cyclone is coming.” Florentino Ariza had seen him there many times, asking for Uncle Leo XII, but never until now had it seemed so clear to him that this uninvited guest had something to do with his life.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨发现，这些秘密的保管人中，除了自己的母亲，其余都属于费尔明娜·达萨的世界。他这方只有他一人，孤独地背负着这个压得他喘不过气来的包袱，多少次都想与人分担，但至今还没有人值得他如此信任。莱昂娜·卡西亚尼是唯一可能的人选，只不过他需要找到合适的方式和机会。那个闷热的夏日午后，他正想着这事，可巧胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生竟爬上了CFC陡峭的楼梯。为了克服三点钟的炎热，他每爬一级便停下来歇一会儿，最终气喘吁吁地出现在弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的办公室时，裤子都被汗水浸湿了。他用尽最后一口气说道：“我相信一场飓风就要刮过来了。”弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨曾在这里接待过他好几次，都是来找莱昂十二叔叔的，但从没有像此时这样清晰地感觉到这位不速之客与自己的生活有着某种联系。
This was during the time that Dr. Juvenal Urbino had overcome the pitfalls of his profession, and was going from door to door, almost like a beggar with his hat in his hand, asking for contributions to his artistic enterprises. Uncle Leo XII had always been one of his most faithful and generous contributors, but just at that moment he had begun his daily ten minute siesta, sitting in the swivel chair at his desk. Florentino Ariza asked Dr. Juvenal Urbino to please wait in his office, which was next to Uncle Leo XII’s and, in a certain sense, served as his waiting room.
那时，胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生已经度过了自己的职业难关，正像个乞丐一样，手里拿着帽子，挨家挨户地为他的艺术事业寻求资助。一直以来，他最长久也最慷慨的资助人之一便是莱昂十二叔叔。而此刻，莱昂十二叔叔正坐在书桌前的弹簧靠背椅上，刚开始睡他那每日十分钟的午觉。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨请胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生在自己的办公室里稍等片刻，这里与莱昂十二叔叔的办公室相邻，在某种意义上就是叔叔接待访客的前厅。
“Do you like music?”
“您喜欢音乐吗？”
They had seen each other on various occasions, but they had never before been face to face as they were now, and once again Florentino Ariza experienced the nausea of feeling himself inferior. The ten minutes were an eternity, during which he stood up three times in the hope that his uncle had awakened early, and he drank an entire thermos of black coffee. Dr. Urbino refused to drink even a single cup. He said: “Coffee is poison.” And he continued to chat about one thing and another and did not even care if anyone was listening to him. Florentino Ariza could not bear his natural distinction, the fluidity and precision of his words, his faint scent of camphor, his personal charm, the easy and elegant manner in which he made his most frivolous sentences seem essential only because he had said them. Then, without warning, the Doctor changed the subject.
他们两人在很多不同的场合见过，但从未像这样面对面坐在一起。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨又一次感到自卑得恶心。在这仿佛无穷无尽的十分钟里，他三次起身，盼望叔叔提前醒来，还喝了整整一保温瓶的苦咖啡。胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生连一杯也没接受。他说：“咖啡是毒药。”接着便聊起一个又一个的话题来，根本也不管对方是否在听。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨无法忍受他那种与生俱来的出众。他用词精准流畅，身上散发出隐隐的樟脑味，魅力独特，风度翩翩，谈吐高雅，就连最为轻浮的言词，只因从他口中说出，也变得精妙无穷。突然，医生一下子转换了话题：
He was taken by surprise. In reality, Florentino Ariza attended every concert and opera performed in the city, but he did not feel capable of engaging in a critical or well-informed discussion. He had a weakness for popular music, above all sentimental waltzes, whose similarity to the ones he had composed as an adolescent, or to his secret verses, could not be denied. He had only to hear them once, and then for nights on end there was no power in heaven or earth that could shake the melody out of his head. But that would not be a serious answer to a serious question put to him by a specialist.
这让弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨有些意外。事实上，城中举办的所有音乐会或歌剧演出他都会前往，但他自觉并没有能力进行一番批评式的或全面的讨论。他对流行音乐情有独钟，尤其是伤感的华尔兹，很显然，它们和他年轻时作的曲子以及他那些秘密诗句异曲同工。他只需随意地听上一遍，接下来的整整几夜，就连全能的上帝也无法将旋律从他的脑海中抹掉。但这不是一个对专家提出的严肃问题的严肃回答。
“I like Gardel,” he said.
“我喜欢加德尔。”他说。
Dr. Urbino understood. “I see,” he said. “He is popular.” And he slipped into a recounting of his many new projects which, as always, had to be realized without official backing. He called to his attention the disheartening inferiority of the performances that could be heard here now, compared with the splendid ones of the previous century. That was true: he had spent a year selling subscriptions to bring the Cortot-Casals-Thibaud trio to the Dramatic Theater, and there was no one in the government who even knew who they were, while this very month there were no seats left for the Ramón Caralt company that performed detective dramas, for the Operetta and Zarzuela Company of Don Manolo de la Presa, for the Santanelas, ineffable mimics, illusionists, and artistes, who could change their clothes on stage in the wink of an eye, for Danyse D”Altaine, advertised as a former dancer with the Folies-Bergère, and even for the abominable Ursus, a Basque madman who took on a fighting bull all by himself. There was no reason to complain, however, if the Europeans themselves were once again setting the bad example of a barbaric war when we had begun to live in peace after nine civil wars in half a century, which, if the truth were told, were all one war: always the same war. What most attracted Florentino Ariza’s attention in that intriguing speech was the possibility of reviving the Poetic Festival, the most renowned and long-lasting of the enterprises that Dr. Juvenal Urbino had conceived in the past. He had to bite his tongue to keep from telling him that he had been an assiduous participant in the annual competition that had eventually interested famous poets, not only in the rest of the country but in other nations of the Caribbean as well.
乌尔比诺医生明白了。“嗯，”他说，“他现在正流行。”接着就巧妙地把话题转到自己那许多新计划上去了：像往常一样，这些计划将在没有官方资助的情况下实现。他向弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨强调，现在能拉来的演出质量低劣，令人泄气，与上世纪能欣赏到的那些节目简直有云泥之别。的确如此：他花了一年的时间预售门票，就为了能把柯尔托、卡萨尔斯和蒂博的三重奏搬上喜剧剧院的舞台，可政府里却没有一个人知道他们三位是谁，而就在眼下这一个月中，拉蒙·卡拉尔特的侦探剧团，马诺罗·德拉普雷萨先生的小歌剧和说唱剧团，洛斯·圣塔内拉剧团（那些难以形容的、善于模仿和表演幻术的小丑们能借着磷火闪动的瞬间在舞台上换衣服），丹妮塞·达尔泰内（据广告称她是牧羊女游乐园的老牌舞蹈演员），甚至还有那个令人厌恶、敢跟斗牛近身搏斗的巴斯克疯子乌尔苏斯，所有这些人的演出票竟然都销售一空。不过，这没什么可抱怨的，因为就连欧洲人自己也又一次做了坏榜样，正进行着野蛮的战争，而我们倒已经在连绵半世纪的九次内战后，开始过上太平日子了。仔细算算，其实那九次内战完全可以视作一次：自始至终不过是同一场战争。这场令人陶醉的演说中，最引起弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨注意的一点就是花会有可能重开，这曾是胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生发起的活动中最轰动、也最持久的一项。阿里萨不得不咬住舌头，以免说出自己曾经是它的执著参与者，那项一年一度的比赛吸引了很多大名鼎鼎的诗人，不仅有来自国内其他地方的，还有来自加勒比其他国家的。
No sooner had the conversation begun than the hot, steamy air suddenly cooled and a storm of crosswinds shook doors and windows with great blasts, while the office groaned down to its foundations like a sailing ship set adrift. Dr. Juvenal Urbino did not seem to notice. He made some casual reference to the lunatic cyclones of June and then, out of the blue, he began to speak of his wife. He considered her not only his most enthusiastic collaborator, but the very soul of his endeavors. He said: “Without her I would be nothing.” Florentino Ariza listened to him, impassive, nodding his agreement with a slight motion of his head, not daring to say anything for fear his voice would betray him. Two or three sentences more, however, were enough for him to understand that Dr. Juvenal Urbino, in the midst of so many absorbing commitments, still had more than enough time to adore his wife almost as much as he did, and that truth stunned him. But he could not respond as he would have liked, because then his heart played one of those whorish tricks that only hearts can play: it revealed to him that he and this man, whom he had always considered his personal enemy, were victims of the same fate and shared the hazards of a common passion; they were two animals yoked together. For the first time in the interminable twenty-seven years that he had been waiting, Florentino Ariza could not endure the pangs of grief at the thought that this admirable man would have to die in order for him to be happy.
谈话刚刚开始，热腾腾的空气就骤然凉了下来，一阵四处乱窜的狂风把门窗摇晃得噼啪作响。办公室连同房子的地基都咯吱咯吱地响起来，仿佛汪洋中的一叶孤帆。胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生似乎没有觉察到这些。他随便提了几句六月肆虐的飓风后，出其不意地谈起了他的妻子。他不仅视她为最热情的合作者，还把她视作自己一切倡议的灵魂。他说：“没有她，我会一事无成。”弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨无动于衷地听着他的话，微微点头表示赞同，他不敢开口说话，因为害怕声音会背叛自己。但再听了两三句话后，他便明白胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生在那么多耗费精力的应酬之余，仍有富裕的时间去仰慕自己的妻子，而且程度几乎与他不相上下。这个事实令他茫然。但他没有做出自己本想做出的反应，因为此时，他的心对他耍了一个只有心才能耍出的婊子花招：他的心告诉他，他和这个他一直视作死敌的男人是同一命运的牺牲品，遭受着同一种激情带来的厄运——是两头套在同一架轭上的牲口。在二十七年无休止的等待中，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨头一次无法承受这种内心的剌痛：眼前这个令人钦佩的男人必须死掉，只有这样他才能幸福。
The cyclone passed by at last, but in fifteen minutes its gusting northwest winds had devastated the neighborhoods by the swamps and caused severe damage in half the city. Dr. Juvenal Urbino, gratified once again by the generosity of Uncle Leo XII, did not wait for the weather to clear, and without thinking he accepted the umbrella that Florentino Ariza lent him for walking to his carriage. But he did not mind. On the contrary: he was happy thinking about what Fermina Daza would think when she learned who the owner of the umbrella was. He was still troubled by the unsettling interview when Leona Cassiani came into his office, and this seemed to him a unique opportunity to stop beating about the bush and to reveal his secret, as if he were squeezing a boil that would not leave him in peace: it was now or never. He began by asking her what she thought of Dr. Juvenal Urbino. She answered almost without thinking: “He is a man who does many things, too many perhaps, but I believe that no one knows what he thinks.” Then she reflected, shredding the eraser on a pencil with her long, sharp, black woman’s teeth, and at last she shrugged her shoulders to put an end to a matter that did not concern her.
飓风终于扬长而去，但这强劲的西北风在十五分钟内已席卷了沼泽附近的好几个街区，毁掉了几乎半座城市。胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生又一次对莱昂十二叔叔的慷慨表示满意，没等雨完全停就离开了，还无意中带走了弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨借给他撑到车前的雨伞。但弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨没有介意。甚至刚好相反：他很高兴地想着费尔明娜·达萨知道伞的主人是谁时会作何感想。当莱昂娜·卡西亚尼走过他的办公室，他还沉浸在这次激动人心的会面所带来的恍惚之中。他觉得这是唯一的机会，无需兜圈子便可以向她吐露自己的秘密，就仿佛挑破要命的腋下脓疖似的：要么现在，要么永远都不。他开始问她对胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生这个人怎么看。她几乎想都没想便回答说：“他做了许多事，或许做得太多了，但我相信没人知道他心里在想些什么。”接着，她思索了片刻，一边想一边用她那只有高大的黑女人才有的又大又锋利的牙齿，把铅笔上的橡皮一块块咬下来，最后，她耸了耸肩，以此结束这个与自己毫不相关的话题。
Florentino Ariza tried to keep her with him. “What hurts me is that he has to die,” he said.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨试图留住她。“让我难过的是，他不得不死。”他说。
“That may be the reason he does so many things,” she said, “so that he will not have to think.”
“也许正因为此，他才做那么多事吧，”她说，“这样可以免得去想。”
She understood none of it: she shrugged her shoulders again without speaking and left. Then Florentino Ariza knew that some night, sometime in the future, in a joyous bed with Fermina Daza, he was going to tell her that he had not revealed the secret of his love, not even to the one person who had earned the right to know it. No: he would never reveal it, not even to Leona Cassiani, not because he did not want to open the chest where he had kept it so carefully hidden for half his life, but because he realized only then that he had lost the key.
她一点儿也没听懂，又耸了耸肩，没说话便走了。于是，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨知道，在将来的某个晚上，同费尔明娜·达萨躺在一张幸福的床上时，他将会告诉她，他没有把他的爱情秘密透露给任何人，甚至对唯一一个赢得了知情权的人也没有说。不：他将永远不会向人吐露这个秘密，即便是对莱昂娜·卡西亚尼，这并非因为他不想向她打开这只他珍藏了半辈子的宝箱，而是因为直到开启的那一瞬间他才发现，他已把钥匙弄丢了。
“Everybody has to die,” she said.
“世上的人都是要死的。”她说。
“Yes,” he said, “but he more than anyone else.”
“是的，”他说，“但他比任何人都更应该死。”
That, however, was not the most staggering event of the afternoon. He still had the nostalgic memory of his youth, his vivid recollection of the Poetic Festival, whose thunder sounded throughout the Antilles every April 15. He was always one of the protagonists, but always, as in almost everything he did, a secret protagonist. He had participated several times since the inaugural competition, and he had never received even honorable mention. But that did not matter to him, for he did compete not out of ambition for the prize but because the contest held an additional attraction for him: in the first session Fermina Daza had opened the sealed envelopes and announced the names of the winners, and then it was established that she would continue to do so in the years that followed.
然而，那天下午最震撼他的还不是这件事。他沉浸在对青春岁月的怀念当中，一场场花会的情景历历在目。每年的四月十五，喧嚣声都会响彻整个安的列斯群岛，他始终是主角之一，但也和在几乎所有其他活动中一样，始终是秘密的主角。自首届诗赛以来，他参加过好几次，可就连末等奖中也从未出现他的名字。不过他不在乎，因为他参赛并非出于获奖的野心，而是因为这项赛事对他来说别具吸引力：第一次比赛中，负责打开火漆封口的信封并宣布获奖名单的人是费尔明娜·达萨，从那时起，他就注定要在此后的每一年都参加比赛了。
Hidden in the darkness of an orchestra seat, a fresh camellia in the buttonhole of his lapel throbbing with the strength of his desire, Florentino Ariza saw Fermina Daza open the three sealed envelopes on the stage of the old National Theater on the night of the first Festival. He asked himself what was going to happen in her heart when she discovered that he was the winner of the Golden Orchid. He was certain she would recognize his handwriting, and that then she would evoke the afternoons of embroidery under the almond trees in the little park, the scent of faded gardenias in his letters, the private Waltz of the Crowned Goddess at windblown daybreak. It did not happen. Even worse, the Golden Orchid, the most sought-after prize among the nation’s poets, was awarded to a Chinese immigrant. The public scandal provoked by that unheard-of decision threw doubts on the seriousness of the competition. But the decision was correct, and the unanimity of the judges had its justification in the excellence of the sonnet.
那天夜晚，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨躲在前排靠背椅的阴影中，翻领的扣眼上别着一枝娇艳的山茶花，随着他强烈的渴望上下起伏。他看见费尔明娜·达萨站在古老的国家剧院的舞台上，打开三只用火漆封着的信封。他问自己，当她发现金兰花奖的得主是他时，心里会有怎样的波澜？他能肯定她认得出他的笔迹，在那一瞬间，她定会回想起小花园杏树下剌绣的那一个个下午，想起信中那些干枯的栀子花的芳香，想起清晨风中那曲只属于两人的花冠女神的华尔兹。但这一切都没有发生。更糟糕的是：金兰花奖，这个万人渴望的国家诗歌大奖竟授给了一个中国移民。这个不同寻常的决定引起了公众的骚动，甚至令大赛的严肃性受到质疑。但评判是公正的，评委会一致认为那首十四行诗精妙绝伦。
No one believed that the author was the Chinese who received the prize. At the end of the last century, fleeing the scourge of yellow fever that devastated Panama during the constructio n of the railroad between the two oceans, he had arrived along with many others who stayed here until they died, living in Chinese, reproducing in Chinese, and looking so much alike that no one could tell one from the other. At first there were no more than ten, some of them with their wives and children and edible dogs, but in a few years four narrow streets in the slums along the port were overflowing with other, unexpected Chinese, who came into the country without leaving a trace in the customs records. Some of the young ones turned into venerable patriarchs with so much haste that no one could explain how they had time to grow old. In the popular view they were divided into two kinds: bad Chinese and good Chinese. The bad ones were those in the lugubrious restaurants along the waterfront, where one was as likely to eat like a king as to die a sudden death at the table, sitting before a plate of rat meat with sunflowers, and which were thought to be nothing more than fronts for white slavery and many other kinds of traffic. The good ones were the Chinese in the laundries, heirs of a sacred knowledge, who returned one’s shirts cleaner than new, with collars and cuffs like recently ironed Communion wafers. The man who defeated seventy-two well-prepared rivals in the Poetic Festival was one of these good Chinese.
没人相信获奖的中国人是那首诗的作者。上个世纪末，为了逃避修建两大洋铁路时席卷巴拿马的黄热病瘟疫，他和其他很多中国人一起来到这里，到死都没有再离开。他们用中文生活，用中文繁衍后代，彼此间长得十分相像，以至于没人能分得清他们谁是谁。起初，一共也没有十个人，有几个带着妻子儿女和用来食用的狗。但没过几年，他们和那些入境时未在海关留下丝毫记录的不期而至的中国人，已经从港口郊外的四条巷子中满溢出来。一些年轻人在匆忙间变成了令人敬仰的族长，谁都无法解释他们哪里来的时间衰老。人们普遍凭直觉把他们分为两类：坏中国人和好中国人。坏的那些都窝在港口阴郁的餐厅里，面对着一盘葵花子炒鼠肉，或者像国王一样大吃大喝，又或者随时准备在桌前暴毙，大家怀疑，那些餐厅不过是在掩人耳目，里面进行的其实是贩娼之类的勾当。好中国人则是那些洗衣店里的人，他们继承了一门神圣的学问，能让交回的衬衫比新的还整洁，领口和袖口都熨烫得像刚出模子的圣体一样。那位在花会上击败了七十二名有备而来的对手的男人，就是这些好中国人之中的一个。
When a bewildered Fermina Daza read out the name, no one understood it, not only because it was an unusual name but because no one knew for certain what Chinese were called. But it was not necessary to think about it very much, because the victorious Chinese walked from the back of the theater with that celestial smile Chinese wear when they come home early. He had been so sure of victory that he had put on a yellow silk robe, appropriate to the rites of spring, in order to accept the prize. He received the eighteen-carat Golden Orchid and kissed it with joy in the midst of the thundering jeers of the incredulous. He did not react. He waited in the middle of the stage, as imperturbable as the apostle of a Divine Providence less dramatic than ours, and as soon as it was quiet he read the winning poem. No one understood him. But when the new round of jeers and whistles was over, an impassive Fermina Daza read it again, in her hoarse, suggestive voice, and amazement reigned after the first line. It was a perfect sonnet in the purest Parnassian tradition, and through it there wafted a breath of inspiration that revealed the involvement of a master hand. The only possible explanation was that one of the great poets had devised the joke in order to ridicule the Poetic Festival, and that the Chinese had been a party to it and was determined to keep the secret until the day he died. The Commercial Daily, our traditional newspaper, tried to save our civic honor with an erudite and rather confused essay concerning the antiquity and cultural influence of the Chinese in the Caribbean, and the right they had earned to participate in Poetic Festivals. The author of the essay did not doubt that the writer of the sonnet was in fact who he said he was, and he defended him in a straightforward manner, beginning with the title itself: “All Chinese Are Poets.” The instigators of the plot, if there was one, rotted in their graves along with the secret. For his part, the Chinese who had won died without confession at an Oriental age and was buried with the Golden Orchid in his coffin, but also with the bitterness of never having achieved the only thing he wanted in his life, which was recognition as a poet. On his death, the press recalled the forgotten incident of the Poetic Festival and reprinted the sonnet with a Modernist vignette of fleshy maidens and gold cornucopias, and the guardian angels of poetry took advantage of the opportunity to clarify matters: the sonnet seemed so bad to the younger generation that no one could doubt any longer that it had, in fact, been composed by the dead Chinese.
当费尔明娜·达萨头晕眼花地读出那个名字时，谁也没有听懂。不仅因为那名字本身就不同寻常，更因为无论如何没人说得准中国人的名字到底该怎么读。但也无需劳神，因为获奖的中国人已经从包厢的尽头走了出来，脸上带着中国人早早回家时的那种完美微笑。他显然早已胜券在握，所以还特意为领奖穿上了春节时穿的黄色丝绸衬衣。他接过18K的金兰花，在质疑者震耳欲聋的嘘声中，幸福地亲吻了奖杯。他面不改色，只是在舞台中央静静等着，沉着得就像一位全能上帝的使徒：很明显，他那位上帝的神意远不及我们这位如此富有戏剧性。台下刚一安静下来，他便朗读了获奖的诗作。谁也没有听懂。但新的一阵嘘声过后，费尔明娜·达萨冷静地用她那撩人的沙哑嗓音又读了一遍，从第一句起就震惊了全场。那是一首正宗的帕尔纳斯派十四行诗，完美无瑕，自始至终贯穿着一缕灵感的清风，显露出一位高手的深厚功力。唯一可能的解释就是，某位大诗人想出了这个玩笑似的主意，以此捉弄花会，而这个中国人自告奋勇助他一臂之力，并且抱定了至死保守秘密的决心。我们的传统报纸《商业日报》试图挽回市民的荣誉，发表了一篇博学或者说是晦涩难懂的文章，讨论了中国人在加勒比地区的久远渊源和文化影响，以及他们参加花会的充分权利。撰写此文的人毫不怀疑十四行诗的作者就是那位自称是作者的人，并以文章的题目直截了当地表明了自己的理由：《中国人皆是诗人》。即使真有阴谋，阴谋的发起者也早已带着秘密烂在坟墓里了。获奖的中国诗人活到了东方人的高寿，死前并没有忏悔。下葬时，棺材里放着那枝金兰花。他多少有些饮恨而终，因为生前没有得到他唯一渴望的东西，即人们对他诗人身份的认可。为纪念他的辞世，报界又回顾了那次已被淡忘的花会事件，再次刊登那首十四行诗，并配上盈润少女手捧丰饶之杯的现代主义插图。而诗歌的守护神也利用此次机会让一切归回原位：新一代觉得那首十四行诗糟糕透顶，于是谁也不再怀疑它的作者当真是那位已故的中国人了。
Florentino Ariza always associated that scandalous event with the memory of an opulent stranger who sat beside him. He had noticed her at the beginning of the ceremony, but then he had forgotten her in the frightful suspense of anticipation. She attracted his attention because of her mother-of-pearl whiteness, her happy plump woman’s scent, her immense soprano’s bosom crowned by an artificial magnolia. She wore a very close-fitting black velvet dress, as black as her eager warm eyes, and her hair, caught at the nape of her neck with a gypsy comb, was blacker still. She wore pendant earrings, a matching necklace, and identical rings, shaped like sparkling roses, on several fingers. A beauty mark had been drawn with pencil on her right cheek. In the din of the final applause, she looked at Florentino Ariza with sincere grief.
在弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的记忆中，这场闹剧总是与当时坐在他身边的一位体态丰腴的陌生女人联系在一起。典礼一开始他便注意到了她，但之后，由于忐忑的等待，他又把她忘记了。她那珍珠母一样白皙的皮肤，她身上那种幸福丰盈的女人所特有的芳香，以及她那女高音般的宽大胸脯上别的一枝人造洋玉兰，这一切都引起他的注意。一袭黑色的天鹅绒长裙紧裹着她的身体，黑得就像她那双充满渴望和热情的眼睛。头发更是乌黑，用一把吉卜赛人的发梳别在后颈处。耳坠和项链是同一款式的，好几根手指上戴着一模一样的戒指，而所有的首饰都嵌着闪闪发亮的泡泡钉，右边的脸颊还用眉笔画了一颗痣。在最后那片混乱的掌声中，她怀着真诚的哀伤看了弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨一眼。
“Believe me, my heart goes out to you,” she said to him.
“请相信我，我真心为您感到遗憾。”她对他说。
Florentino Ariza was amazed, not because of the condolences, which he in fact deserved, but because of his overwhelming astonishment that anyone knew his secret. She explained: “I knew because of how the flower trembled in your lapel as they opened the envelopes.” She showed him the velvet magnolia in her hand, and she opened her heart to him.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨很感动，倒并非因为这份他应得的同情，而是惊讶竟有人知晓他的秘密。她向他道明原委：“我是从开信封时您翻领上那枝山茶花的起伏中看出来的。”她把手中的长毛绒洋玉兰拿给他看，并向他敞开了心扉。
She was on the verge of tears because of his defeat, but Florentino Ariza raised her spirits with his instincts of a nocturnal hunter.
她因失败而马上就要落下泪来，但弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨用他那夜间狩猎者的本能改变了她的情绪。
“That is why I took off mine,” she said.
“所以我才老早就摘下了我这朵。”她说。
He accompanied her to her house. At the door, since it was almost midnight and there was no one on the street, he persuaded her to invite him in for a brandy while they looked at the scrapbooks and photograph albums, containing over ten years of public events, which she had told him she owned. It was an old trick even then, but this time it was guileless, because she was the one who had talked about her albums as they walked from the National Theater. They went in. The first thing Florentino Ariza observed in the living room was that the door to the only bedroom was open, and that the bed was huge and luxurious with a brocaded quilt and a headboard with brass foliage. That disturbed him. She must have realized it, for she crossed the living room and closed the bedroom door. Then she invited him to sit down on a flowered cretonne sofa where a sleeping cat was lying, and she placed her collection of albums on the coffee table. Florentino Ariza began to leaf through them in an unhurried way, thinking more about his next step than about what he was seeing, and then he looked up and saw that her eyes were full of tears. He advised her to cry to her heart’s content, and to feel no shame, for there was no greater relief than weeping, but he suggested that she loosen her bodice first. He hurried to help her, because her bodice was tightly fastened in the back with a long closure of crossed laces. He did not have to unlace them all, for the bodice burst open from sheer internal pressure, and her astronomical bosom was able to breathe freely.
他把她送回家。到了门口，几乎已是午夜时分，街上一个人也没有，他便说服她邀请自己进去喝一杯白兰地，边喝边看看她提到的这十多年来积攒的有关公众大事件的剪报和相册。这个花招即使在当时也已经很老套了，但这一次却不是他主动出击，而是她在从国家剧院回来的路上就说起她的剪报。他们进了屋。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨从进客厅的第一眼便注意到，唯一一间卧室的门敞开着，床宽大而豪华，铺着锦缎床罩，床头饰有铜树枝。这让他有些慌乱。她想必注意到了这一点，上前一步穿过客厅，关上了卧室门。她请他坐在一张印花布的长沙发上，上面有一只猫在睡觉，然后她把收集的几个册子放到了中间桌子上。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨不紧不慢地翻着册子，想得更多的是接下来的行为，而非正在看的东西。忽然，他抬起眼，看见她双眼噙满泪花。他劝她想哭就哭，用不着难为情，因为没有什么比哭泣更能减轻痛苦了，但他建议她先松开紧身背心再哭。他上前去帮她，因为那件紧紧束在身上的背心后面有两根带子来回交叉地系着。他并不需要将带子完全解开，刚解到一半，紧身背心就因内部的压力自己松开了，那对硕大的乳房终于自由地呼吸起来。
“Let us go someplace where we can cry together,” he said.
“咱们找个地方去一起哭一场。”他对她说。
Florentino Ariza, who had never lost the timidity of a novice even in comfortable circumstances, risked a superficial caress on her neck with the tips of his fingers, and she writhed and moaned like a spoiled child and did not stop crying. Then he kissed her on the same spot, just as softly, and he could not kiss her a second time because she turned toward him with all her monumental body, eager and warm, and they rolled in an embrace on the floor. The cat on the sofa awoke with a screech and jumped on top of them. They groped like desperate virgins and found each other any way they could, wallowing in the torn albums, fully dressed, soaked with sweat, and more concerned with avoiding the furious claws of the cat than with the disastrous love they were making. But beginning the following night, their scratches still bleeding, they continued to make love for several years.
即便是在最顺手的场合，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨也从未摆脱第一次的紧张。他鼓足勇气用指肚轻抚她的脖颈，而她蜷起身子，像个被娇宠的小姑娘似的呻吟着，但始终没有停止哭泣。于是他又轻吻了一下她的脖子。他没来得及吻第二下，她就将她那贪婪、火热的庞大身躯整个地掉转过来，两人抱滚到地上。沙发上的猫惊醒了，尖叫一声跳到他们身上。两人像窘迫的新手一样忙乱地摸索着对方，但不管怎样总算找着了。他们在散了页的剪报册上翻滚着，身上还穿着衣服，大汗淋漓，比起自己闯下的爱的灾祸，他们更担心猫儿疯狂的抓挠。但从伤口还在流血的第二天晚上起，他们又继续这样做了好几年。
When he realized that he had begun to love her, she was in the fullness of her years, and he was approaching his thirtieth birthday. Her name was Sara Noriega, and she had enjoyed fifteen minutes of fame in her youth when she won a competition with a collection of poems about love among the poor, a book that was never published. She was a teacher of deportment and civics in the public schools, and she lived on her salary in a rented flat in the motley Sweethearts” Mews in the old Gethsemane District. She had had several occasional lovers, but none with intentions of matrimony, because it was difficult for a man of her time and place to marry a woman he had taken to bed. Nor did she cherish that dream again after her first formal fiancé, whom she loved with the almost demented passion of which one is capable at the age of eighteen, broke the engagement one week before the date they had set for the wedding, and left her to wander the limbo of abandoned brides. Or of used goods, as they used to say in those days. And yet that first experience, although cruel and short-lived, did not leave her bitter; rather, she had the overwhelming conviction that with or without marriage, or God, or the law, life was not worth living without a man in her bed. What Florentino Ariza liked best about her was that in order to reach the heights of glory, she had to suck on an infant’s pacifier while they made love. Eventually they had a string of them, in every size, shape, and color they could find in the market, and Sara Noriega hung them on the headboard so she could reach them without looking in her moments of extreme urgency.
当他发现自己开始爱上她时，她已整整四十岁，而他即将年满三十。她叫萨拉·诺列加，年轻时以一本描写穷人爱情的诗集赢过一次比赛，曾有那么一刻钟出尽风头，但书从未出版过。她是公立学校修养与公民教育课的老师，靠工资生活，住在鱼龙混杂的赫塞玛尼老区恋人巷一幢租来的房子里。她曾有过几个短暂的情人，但没一个抱有跟她结婚的打算，因为想让那个时代和环境中的男人跟哪个女人睡过觉就娶哪个女人实在是太难了。自从她的第一个正式未婚夫逃婚以后，她自己也不再让这样的幻想滋生。她以十八岁所能付出的全部疯狂与热情爱着他，而他却在婚礼的前一星期逃避了自己的承诺，将她抛弃在绝境，成了被人耻笑的新娘。或者用当时的话来说，成了被人用过的未婚姑娘。然而，那第一次的恋爱经历虽然残酷而短暂，却没有给她留下任何痛苦，而是让她有了一个模糊的信念，那就是不管有没有婚姻，有没有上帝，甚至有没有法律，如果床上没有个男人，那日子根本就不值得过。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨最喜欢她的一点，就是她在做爱时必须吸吮一个婴儿用的奶嘴才能达到幸福的顶峰。他们把市场上能找到的各种大小、形状和颜色的奶嘴买来了一大串，萨拉·诺列加把它们挂在床头，以便在紧要关头伸手就能够到。
Such secretiveness could not flourish without misapprehensions. Tránsito Ariza died in the conviction that the son she had conceived in love and raised for love was immune to any kind of love because of his first youthful misfortune. But many less benevolent people who were very close to him, who were familiar with his mysterious character and his fondness for mystic ceremonies and strange lotions, shared the suspicion that he was immune not to love but only to women. Florentino Ariza knew it and never did anything to dis prove it. It did not worry Sara Noriega either. Like the countless other women who loved him, and even those who gave and received pleasure without loving him, she accepted him for what he really was: a man passing through.
但如果没有误解，这种秘密也不可能一直成功地深藏不露。就连特兰西多·阿里萨死前都坚信，她以爱抚养长大的儿子因为年轻时的首战失利，从此对一切形式的爱情都具备了免疫力。不过，他身边很多人的想法就没那么仁慈了，他们了解他诡秘的性格，知道他爱好各种秘教服饰和奇怪的沐浴露，于是都怀疑他并非对爱情，而是对女人具备了免疫力。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨知道这些揣测，但从来置之不理，并不澄清。萨拉·诺列加也毫不在乎。和无数爱过他的女人一样，甚至也和那些并不爱他却在交往中让彼此都收获了满足的女人一样，她是按照他真实的样子来接受他的：一个过客似的男人。
Although she was as free as he was, and perhaps would not have been opposed to making their relationship public, from the very first Florentino Ariza considered it a clandestine adventure. He would slip in by the back door, almost always very late at night, and sneak away on tiptoe just before dawn. He knew as well as she that in a crowded and subdivided building like hers the neighbors had to know more than they pretended. But although it was a mere formality, that was how Florentino Ariza was, how he would be with all women for the rest of his life. He never made a slip, with her or with any other woman; he never betrayed their confidence. He did not exaggerate: on only one occasion did he leave a compromising trace or written evidence, and this might have cost him his life. In truth, he always behaved as if he were the eternal husband of Fermina Daza, an unfaithful husband but a tenacious one, who fought endlessly to free himself from his servitude without causing her the displeasure of a betrayal.
虽然她和他一样都是自由身，或许也并不反对把他们的关系公开，但弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨还是一开始便把这种关系界定为秘密探险。他几乎总是在深夜才从后门溜进来，天亮前不久再踮着脚逃走。他和她都明白，在这样一所合租的人口众多的房子里，邻居们总是要比他们佯装的知道得多。虽然这只是走走形式，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨却非要如此，在有生之年，他和女人交往时也一直如此，从未出过差错，无论是和她，还是和其他女人，都从未被抓住偷情的把柄。这么说一点儿也不夸张：只有一次，他留下了牵连的痕迹，或者说手写的证据，差点要了他的命。事实上，他一直都表现得就像是费尔明娜·达萨彻头彻尾的丈夫：肉体上不忠，心灵上却死心塌地；不停地努力摆脱自己所受的奴役，却又从不让自己的背叛给她带去痛苦。
He eventually showed up at her house at any hour, above all on Sunday mornings, the most peaceful time. She would leave whatever she was doing, no matter what it was, and devote her entire body to trying to make him happy in the enormous mythic bed that was always ready for him, and in which she never permitted the invocation of liturgical formalisms. Florentino Ariza did not understand how a single woman without a past could be so wise in the ways of men, or how she could move her sweet porpoise body with as much lightness and tenderness as if she were moving under water. She would defend herself, saying that love, no matter what else it might be, was a natural talent. She would say: “You are either born knowing how, or you never know.” Florentino Ariza writhed with retrogressive jealousy, thinking that perhaps she had more of a past than she pretended, but he had to swallow everything she said because he told her, as he told them all, that she had been his only lover. Among many other things that he did not like, he had to resign himself to having the furious cat in bed with them, although Sara Noriega had his claws removed so he would not tear them apart while they made love.
到了最后，他随时都可能出现在她家里，尤其是在星期日的早晨，那一向是最平静的时间。她无论正在做什么，都会放下来，将整个身体奉献给他，在那张装饰繁复的大床上，尽全力让他幸福。床一直是准备好的，在那里，她从不允许仪式性的做爱。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨不明白，一个没有什么阅历的独身女子怎么会如此精通男人之事，也不明白她怎么能如此轻盈、如此温柔地控制她那鼠海豚似的柔软身体，就仿佛在水底游动一般。她辩解说，爱情，首先是一种本能，“要么生下来就会，要么永远都不会”。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨浑身抽搐了一下，对她的过去重新萌生了忌妒。他想，或许她要比她装出来的样子饱经沧桑得多，但他只好咽下这些猜疑，因为就像对其他女人说的一样，他也告诉她，她是他唯一的情人。很多事情他都不十分喜欢，比如不得不忍受那只暴怒的猫待在床上，萨拉·诺列加磨钝了猫的爪子，以防做爱时被它抓得稀烂。
However, almost as much as rolling in bed until they were exhausted, she liked to devote the aftermath of love to the cult of poetry. She had an astonishing memory for the sentimental verses of her own time, which were sold in the street in pamphlet form for two centavos as soon as they were written, and she also pinned on the walls the poems she liked most, so that she could read them aloud whenever she wished. She had written versions of the deportment and civics texts in hendecasyllabic couplets, like those used for spelling, but she could not obtain official approval for them. Her declamatory passion was such that at times she continued to shout her recitation as they made love, and Florentino Ariza had to force a pacifier into her mouth, as one did with children to make them stop crying.
然而，几乎就和喜欢在床上闹到筋疲力尽一样，她还喜欢将爱的疲惫献给对诗歌的崇拜。她不仅对她年轻时代的伤感诗有着惊人的记忆——当年，那些新创作的诗歌会装订成小册子在街上出售，两个生太伏一册——还会用大头针把自己最喜欢的诗钉在墙上，以便随时用生动的嗓音朗读。她还把修养与公民教育课的课文编成十一音节双行诗，就像正字法双行诗那样，但终究没能得到官方的赞同。她痴迷于朗诵，以至于做爱时还常常扯着嗓子背起诗来，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨不得不把奶嘴硬塞进她嘴里，就像制止孩子哭泣一样。
In the plenitude of their relationship, Florentino Ariza had asked himself which of the two was love: the turbulent bed or the peaceful Sunday afternoons, and Sara Noriega calmed him with the simple argument that love was everything they did naked. She said: “Spiritual love from the waist up and physical love from the waist down.” Sara Noriega thought this definition would be good for a poem about divided love, which they wrote together and which she submitted to the Fifth Poetic Festival, convinced that no participant had ever presented such an original poem. But she lost again.
在两人感情最好的时期，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨曾问自己，究竟哪一种状态是爱情，是床上的颠鸾倒凤，还是星期日下午的平静。萨拉·诺列加用一个简单的结论让他平静下来，那就是：凡赤身裸体干的事都是爱。她说：“灵魂之爱在腰部以上，肉体之爱在腰部以下。”萨拉·诺列加觉得这个结论很好，可以用来写一首关于貌合神离的爱情的诗。两人联手把这首诗写了出来，她还拿它去参加了第五届花会，并坚信从未有人以如此具原创性的诗歌参加过比赛。但她又一次失败了。
In an attempt to document his memories, he leafed through the albums of the Poetic Festivals while Sara Noriega prepared something to eat. He saw magazine photographs in color, yellowing postcards of the sort sold in arcades for souvenirs, and it was a kind of ghostly review of the fallacy of his own life. Until that time he had maintained the fiction that it was the world that was changing, and its customs and styles: everything but her. But that night he saw for the first time in a conscious way how Fermina Daza’s life was passing, and how his was passing, while he did nothing more than wait. He had never spoken about her to anyone, because he knew he was incapable or saying her name without everyone’s noticing the pallor of his lips. But that night, as he looked through the albums as he had done on so many other evenings of Sunday tedium, Sara Noriega made one of those casual observations that freeze the blood.
他试图理清自己的回忆，在萨拉·诺列加准备饭菜时，又翻起有关花会的剪报和相册。他看见杂志上的彩色画，门廊下作为纪念品出售的泛黄明信片，这一切就仿佛是对他荒谬一生幻影般的回顾。在此之前，一直支撑他的是一个假象，那就是世界在变，习惯在变，风尚在变：一切都在变，唯独她不会变。但那个晚上，他第一次头脑清醒地看见生活如何在费尔明娜·达萨身上留下痕迹，又如何在他自己身上留下痕迹，而他却除了等待之外什么都没有做。他从未和别人说起过她，因为他知道无法在说出她的名字时，不让别人看出他嘴唇的苍白。但那天晚上，正当他像之前无数个乏味的星期日晚上一样，翻看着那些剪报和相册时，萨拉·诺列加突然下了一句足以让他血液凝固的评断。
She was in a rage as Florentino Ariza accompanied her to her house. For some reason she could not explain, she was convinced that Fermina Daza had plotted against her so that her poem would not win first prize. Florentino Ariza paid no attention to her. He had been in a somber mood ever since the awarding of the prizes, for he had not seen Fermina Daza in a long time, and that night he had the impression that she had undergone a profound change: for the first time one could tell just by looking at her that she was a mother. This came as no surprise to him, for he knew that her son was already in school. However, her maternal age had never seemed so apparent to him as it did that night, as much for the size of her waist and the slight shortness of breath when she walked as for the break in her voice when she read the list of prizewinners.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨送她回家时，她怒气冲天。她也说不清为什么，但就是认定费尔明娜·达萨针对她搞了鬼，为了不让她的诗获奖。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨没有理睬她。从颁奖仪式开始，他便心情忧郁，他已许久没见到费尔明娜·达萨了，而那天晚上，他感到她发生了某种深刻的变化：他头一次一眼便能看出她已身为人母。这对他来说并不是新闻，因为他早知道她的儿子已经上小学了。然而，在那一晚之前，她已到了当母亲的年龄这件事在他看来从未如此明显过，她的腰身粗了，走起路来有些气喘吁吁，宣读获奖名单时，声音也磕磕绊绊。
“She’s a whore,” she said.
“真是个婊子。”她说。
She said it as she walked past him and saw a print of Fermina Daza disguised as a black panther at a masquerade ball, and she did not have to mention anyone by name for Florentino Ariza to know whom she was talking about. Fearing a revelation that would shake his very life, he hurried to a cautious defense. He objected that he knew Fermina Daza only from a distance, that they had never gone further than formal greetings, that he had no information about her private life, but was certain she was an admirable woman who had come out of nowhere and risen to the top by virtue of her own merits.
她走过他身边，看到费尔明娜·达萨在一次化装舞会上扮成黑豹的图片时，说出这样一句。无需指名道姓，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨便知道她在说谁。他担心她将揭穿他的秘密，搅乱他的人生，连忙谨慎地展开自卫。他说，他只是认识费尔明娜·达萨而已，关系很浅，与她从来只是礼节性的问候，对她的私事也一无所知，但他十分肯定，她是一个令人景仰的女人，白手起家，凭自己的美德而备受赞扬。
“By virtue of marrying a man she does not love for money,” interrupted Sara Noriega. “That’s the lowest kind of whore.” His mother had told Florentino Ariza the same thing, with less crudeness but with the same moral rigidity, when she tried to console him for his misfortunes. Shaken to the very core, he could find no appropriate response to Sara Noriega’s harshness, and he attempted to change the subject. But Sara Noriega would not allow that to happen until she had given vent to her feelings. In a flash of inspiration that she could not have explained, she was convinced that Fermina Daza had been the one behind the conspiracy to cheat her of the prize. There was no reason to think so: they did not know each other, they had never met, and Fermina Daza had nothing to do with the decision of the judges even though she was privy to their secrets. Sara Noriega said in a categorical manner: “We women intuit these things.” And that ended the discussion.
“凭的是她为了钱而嫁给一个她不爱的男人。”萨拉·诺列加打断他说，“这是婊子的下下策。”虽然不像她这样粗鲁，但弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的母亲当初为了安慰他的遭遇，也说过同样的话，而且在道德上同样严厉。他惊慌失措得直入骨髓，一时间找不到合适的话来反驳她的尖刻，于是试图绕开话题。但萨拉·诺列加还没有发泄完对费尔明娜·达萨的怒气，不允许他逃避。凭着某种说不清也道不明的直觉，她认定费尔明娜·达萨就是夺走她奖杯的幕后主使。没有任何理由能让她这样想：她们互不相识，甚至从未见过面，而就算费尔明娜·达萨了解比赛内情，比赛的结果也跟她没有分毫关系。但萨拉·诺列加斩钉截铁地说：“我们女人是有直觉的。”说完就结束了这场争论。
At ten minutes before twelve, Sara Noriega climbed up on a chair to wind the pendulum clock, and she reset it on the hour, perhaps trying to tell him without saying so that it was time to leave. Then Florentino Ariza felt an urgent need to put a definitive end to that loveless relationship, and he looked for the opportunity to be the one to take the initiative: as he would always do. Praying that Sara Noriega would let him into her bed so that he could tell her no, that everything was over, he asked her to sit next to him when she finished winding the clock. But she preferred to keep her distance in the visitor’s easy chair. Then Florentino Ariza extended his index finger, wet with brandy, so that she could suck it, as she had liked to do in the past during their preambles to love. She refused.
差十分十二点时，萨拉·诺列加爬到一把椅子上去给挂钟上发条，凭记忆调准了时间，或许是想不说话就提醒他该走了。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨迫切地感到要彻底斩断这种无爱的关系，于是开始寻找采取主动的机会。他恳求上帝让萨拉·诺列加允许他留下来过夜，好让他有机会说“不”，有机会告诉她他们之间的一切都完了。为此，她上完发条后，他让她坐到自己身边来。可她却宁愿和他保持距离，坐在客厅的安乐椅上。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨把蘸了白兰地的食指伸过去让她吮吸，以往前戏时，她总喜欢这样。她却避开了。
From that moment on, Florentino Ariza began to see her with different eyes. The years were passing for her too. Her abundant sexuality was withering without glory, her lovemaking was slowed by her sobbing, and her eyelids were beginning to darken with old bitterness. She was yesterday’s flower. Besides, in her fury at the defeat, she had lost count of her brandies. It was not her night: while they were eating their reheated coconut rice, she tried to establish how much each of them had contributed to the losing poem, in order to determine how many petals of the Golden Orchid would have gone to each one. This was not the first time they had amused themselves with Byzantine competitions, but he took advantage of the opportunity to speak through his own newly opened wound, and they became entangled in a mean-spirited argument that stirred up in both of them the rancor of almost five years of divided love.
从那一刻起，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨开始用另一种眼光看她。岁月也在她身上留下痕迹。她那天生的丰腴悄无声息地枯萎了，她的爱欲总是因抽泣迟迟不来，她的眼皮开始显露饱经风雨的阴影。她已成昨日之花。而且，在失败的愤怒中，她没有在意自己喝下了多少白兰地。那一晚的她变了性情：就在他们吃重新热过的椰子米饭时，她试图算清他们两人在那首落榜诗作中的贡献，好知道各自应当分得多少片金兰花的花瓣。这并不是他们第一次以这种锱铢必较的拜占庭式竞赛自娱自乐，但他却利用这个机会来抚平自己刚刚开绽的伤口。两人陷入斤斤计较的争执当中，将近五年来貌合神离的爱情所积累的怨忿浮出了水面。
“Not now,” she said. “I’m expecting someone.”
“现在不，”她说，“我在等人。”
Ever since his rejection by Fermina Daza, Florentino Ariza had learned to always keep the final decision for himself. In less bitter circumstances he would have persisted in his pursuit of Sara Noriega, certain of ending the evening rolling in bed with her, for he was convinced that once a woman goes to bed with a man, she will continue to go to bed with him whenever he desires, as long as he knows how to move her to passion each time. He had endured everything because of that conviction, he had overlooked everything, even the dirtiest dealings in love, so that he would not have to grant to any woman born of woman the opportunity to make the final decision. But that night he felt so humiliated that he gulped down the brandy in a single swallow, doing all he could to display anger, and left without saying goodbye. They never saw each other again.
自从被费尔明娜·达萨拒绝后，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨就学会了始终把决定权握在自己手中。如果不是处于如此尴尬的局面，他一定会继续进攻萨拉·诺列加，当晚的结局定是和她滚在床上，因为他坚信，如果一个女人和一个男人睡过一觉，那么，只要他想，并且懂得如何打动她，她便会一直和他睡觉。基于这个信念，他什么都曾忍受过，哪怕在最为肮脏的爱情交易中，他也能看淡一切，只要不把最后的决定权让给女人就行，无论哪个女人。然而这一晚，他受到了如此的侮辱。他一口咽下白兰地，尽一切可能表达他的怒火，然后没有告别便扬长而去了。从此再没有见过面。
The relationship with Sara Noriega was one of Florentino Ariza’s longest and most stable affairs, although it was not his only one during those five years. When he realized that he felt happy with her, above all in bed, but that she would never replace Fermina Daza, he had another outbreak of his nights as a solitary hunter, and he arranged matters so that he could portion out his time and strength as far as they would go. Sara Noriega, however, achieved the miracle of curing him for a time. At least now he could live without seeing Fermina Daza, instead of interrupting whatever he was doing at any hour of the day to search for her along the uncertain pathways of his presentiments, on the most unlikely streets, in unreal places where she could not possibly be, wandering without reason, with a longing in his breast that gave him no rest until he saw her, even for an instant. The break with Sara Noriega, however, revived his dormant grief, and once again he felt as he did on those afternoons of endless reading in the little park, but this time it was exacerbated by his urgent need for Dr. Juvenal Urbino to die.
同萨拉·诺列加在一起是弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨最为持久和稳定的一段关系，虽说并不是他那五年中唯一的关系。他发现自己虽然在她身边感觉也挺不错，尤其是在床上，但她始终无法取代费尔明娜·达萨，于是他夜晚孤独狩猎的毛病又犯了。他把自己的时间和体力分配得井井有条，以让它们物尽其用。但无论如何，萨拉·诺列加曾一度奇迹般地减轻了他的痛楚。至少现在，他见不到费尔明娜·达萨也能正常生活了，不像从前，常常要随时放下手中的事，凭着自己的猜想四处去寻找她的踪迹，漫无目的地徘徊在一些最不可能的街道，以及她无论如何也不会出现的虚幻之地，只要一刻见不到她，他内心的渴望便一刻不能停歇。如今，与萨拉·诺列加的决裂，让他那沉睡的思念又苏醒了，他仿佛再一次回到了小花园的下午，回到了那永无止境的阅读中去，而且这一次，思念更加浓烈，他迫切地意识到胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生必须死掉。
He had known for a long time that he was predestined to make a widow happy, and that she would make him happy, and that did not worry him. On the contrary: he was prepared. After having known so many of them during his incursions as a solitary hunter, Florentino Ariza had come to realize that the world was full of happy widows. He had seen them go mad with grief at the sight of their husband’s corpse, pleading to be buried alive in the same coffin so they would not have to face the future without him, but as they grew reconciled to the reality of their new condition he had seen them rise up from the ashes with renewed vitality. They began by living like parasites of gloom in their big empty houses, they became the confidantes of their servants, lovers of their pillows, with nothing to do after so many years of sterile captivity. They wasted their overabundant hours doing what they had not had time for before, sewing the buttons on the dead man’s clothes, ironing and reironing the shirts with stiff collar and cuffs so that they would always be in perfect condition. They continued to put his soap in the bathroom, his monogrammed pillowcase on the bed; his place was always set at the table, in case he returned from the dead without warning, as he tended to do in life. But in those solitary Masses they began to be aware that once again they were mistresses of their fate, after having renounced not only their family name but their own identity in exchange for a security that was no more than another of a bride’s many illusions. They alone knew how tiresome was the man they loved to distraction, who perhaps loved them but whom they had to continue nurturing until his last breath as if he were a child, suckling him, changing his soiled diapers, distracting him with a mother’s tricks to ease his terror at going out each morning to face reality. And nevertheless, when they watched him leave the house, this man they themselves had urged to conquer the world, then they were the ones left with the terror that he would never return. That was their life. Love, if it existed, was something separate: another life.
很早以前他就知道，他生来就能让寡妇幸福，而寡妇也能让他幸福，对此他从不苦恼。恰恰相反，他时刻待命。在一次又一次孤独的狩猎行动中，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨已对她们了如指掌，并最终明白了，这世界上到处都是幸福的寡妇。他曾看见她们在丈夫的尸体前痛苦得发疯，恳求别人把自己也放入同一口棺木，活活埋入地下，以免独自面对前路无法预知的苦难。可随着她们接受了现实，适应了新的境况，人们就会看到她们从尘土中站起来，获得新生。起初她们像阴影中的寄生虫一样生活在空荡荡的大房子里，向女仆们倾诉着心声，整日赖在枕头上：当了那么多年无所事事的囚徒，她们不知道自己该干些什么。为了打发绰绰有余的时间，她们为死者的衣服钉上以前从来没有时间去钉的扣子，把他们的衬衫熨了又熨，还给袖口和领口上蜡，让它们时刻保持完美。她们继续为死去的丈夫在浴室放上香皂，在床上铺好带有他们名字首字母的床罩，在餐桌他们的位置上摆好餐具，以防死者说不定什么时候没有事先通知就回来了，就像他们生前常做的那样。但当她们独自去望弥撒时，才逐渐意识到，自己又一次成为自己意愿的主人，当初，为了换取一种安全感，她们不仅放弃了自己家庭的姓氏，甚至放弃了自我，可那种安全感不过是她们做姑娘时许多幻想中的一个罢了。只有她们自己知道，她们曾经疯狂爱着的那个男人——尽管他或许也爱着她们——给她们带来的负担有多么沉重，她们不得不照顾他们直到最后一口气，喂他们吃喝，给他们换下脏兮兮的尿布，用母亲式的巧妙花招哄他们开心，以减轻他们清晨走出家门去直面现实的恐惧。可当看到他们受自己的鼓动离开家门，准备一口去吞掉整个世界时，她们又开始害怕男人会一去不复返。这就是生活。而爱，如果真的存在，则是另一回事：另一种生活。
In the restorative idleness of solitude, on the other hand, the widows discovered that the honorable way to live was at the body’s bidding, eating only when one was hungry, loving without lies, sleeping without having to feign sleep in order to escape the indecency of official love, possessed at last of the right to an entire bed to themselves, where no one fought them for half of the sheet, half of the air they breathed, half of their night, until their bodies were satisfied with dreaming their own dreams, and they woke alone. In the dawns of his furtive hunting, Florentino Ariza would see them coming out of five o’clock Mass, shrouded in black and with the raven of destiny on their shoulder. As soon as they spotted him in the light of dawn, they would cross the street to walk on the other side with their small, hesitant steps, the steps of a little bird, for just walking near a man might stain their honor. And yet he was convinced that a dis consolate widow, more than any other woman, might carry within her the seed of happiness.
然而，在孤独中休养生息时，寡妇们发现，诚实的生活方式其实是按照自己身体的意愿行事，饿的时候才吃饭，爱的时候不必撒谎，睡觉的时候也不用为了逃避可耻的爱情程式而装睡，自己终于成了整张床的主人，它的全部都归自己独享，再没有人跟她们争一半的床单、一半的空气和一半的夜晚，甚至身体也终于能尽情做属于自己的梦，能自然而然地独自醒来了。在偷欢过后的清晨，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨看见她们望完五点钟的弥撒出来，身上裹着黑纱，厄运的乌鸦从她们肩上飞过。一旦她们在晨曦中隐约看见他的身影，便会迈着小鸟般的碎步，穿到街对面的人行道上去，因为单是从一个男人身边走过也会玷污她们的清誉。然而他坚信，一个忧伤的寡妇比其他任何女人心里都更可能藏着幸福的种子。
So many widows in his life, since the Widow Nazaret, had made it possible for him to discern how happy they were after the death of their husbands. What had been only a dream until then was changed, thanks to them, into a possibility that he could seize with both hands. He saw no reason why Fermina Daza should not be a widow like them, prepared by life to accept him just as he was, without fantasies of guilt because of her dead husband, resolved to dis cover with him the other happiness of being happy twice, with one love for everyday use which would become, more and more, a miracle of being alive, and the other love that belonged to her alone, the love immunized by death against all contagion.
从拿撒勒的寡妇开始，他一生中结识了太多寡妇，这让他懂得在丈夫死后，一个女人会变得多么幸福。多亏了她们，之前对他来说不过是个单纯幻想的东西，变成了一种他可以触摸到的可能性。他想不出费尔明娜·达萨有什么理由不像其他寡妇一样，因生活的锤炼而变得可以欣然接受他，而不必为死去的丈夫感到虚妄的自责。她将毅然决然地和他一起，去发现另一种双重的幸福，怀着一份能将每时每刻都变成生命奇迹的寻常之爱，以及另一份只属于她一个人、因死神的豁免而出淤泥不染的爱。
Perhaps he would not have been as enthusiastic if he had even suspected how far Fermina Daza was from those illusory calculations, at a time when she was just beginning to perceive the horizon of a world in which everything was foreseen except adversity. In those days, being rich had many advantages, and many disadvantages as well, of course, but half the world longed for it as the most probable way to live forever. Fermina Daza had rejected Florentino Ariza in a lightning flash of maturity which she paid for immediately with a crisis of pity, but she never doubted that her decision had been correct. At the time she could not explain what hidden impulses of her reason had allowed her that clairvoyance, but many years later, on the eve of old age, she uncovered them suddenly and without knowing how during a casual conversation about Florentino Ariza. Everyone knew that he was heir apparent to the River Company of the Caribbean during its greatest period; they were all sure they had seen him many times, and had even had dealings with him, but no one could remember what he was like. It was then that Fermina Daza experienced the revelation of the unconscious motives that had kept her from loving him. She said: “It is as if he were not a person but only a shadow.” That is what he was: the shadow of someone whom no one had ever known. But while she resisted the siege of Dr. Juvenal Urbino, who was just the opposite, she felt herself tormented by the phantom of guilt: the only emotion she could not bear. When she felt it coming on, a kind of panic overtook her which she could control only if she found someone to soothe her conscience. Ever since she was a little girl, when a plate broke in the kitchen, when someone fell, when she herself caught her finger in the door, she would turn in dismay to the nearest adult and make her accusation: “It was your fault.” Although in reality she was not concerned with who was responsible or with convincing herself of her own innocence: she was satisfied at having established it.
但事实上，他哪怕只是去怀疑一下费尔明娜·达萨距离他这些如意算盘有多么遥远，或许就不会如此热情高涨了：结婚那时，她才刚刚隐约望见地平线上一个崭新的世界，一切都在向她招手致意——除了挫折。在那个年代，富有有很多好处，当然，也有很多坏处，但半个世界的人都对它梦寐以求，认为它是获得永生的最可能的途径。费尔明娜·达萨当初在某种乍现的成熟之光中拒绝了弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨，而很快，她就因遗憾与负疚感到了痛苦，但她从未怀疑过自己的决定是正确的。那时，她也无法解释究竟是什么深藏不露的理智让她做出了那样高瞻远瞩的决定，但多年以后，当她即将步入老年的时候，不知怎的，在一次关于弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的偶然谈话中，她突然发现了其中的奥秘。所有参加那次聚会的人都知道他是正值鼎盛时期的加勒比河运公司的接班人，很多人都十分肯定曾见过他多次，甚至还和他打过交道，但没有一个人记得清他是什么模样。于是，费尔明娜·达萨发现了潜意识中阻碍她爱他的原因。她说：“他就好像不是一个人，而是一个影子。”的确如此：他是一个谁都不认识的人的影子。然而，就在她抵制胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生，一个恰恰相反的男人的纠缠时，她却感到自己被负罪感的幽灵所折磨：这是她唯一无法承受的感觉。当它来袭时，她整个人都被惊恐笼罩着，只有找到某个能帮她减轻良心谴责的人，才能控制住这种情绪。从很小的时候起，每当她在厨房打破盘子，有人跌倒，或她的手指被门夹到时，她都会惊慌失措地跑到离她最近的大人跟前，赶忙指责他：“都是你的错。”虽然事实上她并不在乎到底是谁的错，也不在乎自己是否真的相信自己无辜——只要把这种无辜从言语上确定下来就足够了。
The specter was so notorious that Dr. Urbino realized how much it threatened the harmony of his home, and as soon as he detected it he hastened to tell his wife: “Don’t worry, my love, it was my fault.” For he feared nothing so much as his wife’s sudden categorical decisions, and he was convinced that they always originated in a feeling of guilt. The confusion caused by her rejection of Florentino Ariza, however, had not been resolved with comforting words. For several months Fermina Daza continued to open up the balcony in the morning, and she always missed the solitary phantom watching her from the deserted little park; she saw the tree that had been his, the most obscure bench where he would sit to read as he thought about her, suffered for her, and she would have to close the window again, sighing: “Poor man.” When it was already too late to make up for the past, she even suffered the disillusionment of knowing that he was not as tenacious as she had supposed, and from time to time she would still feel a belated longing for a letter that never arrived. But when she had to face the decision of marrying Juvenal Urbino, she succumbed, in a major crisis, when she realized that she had no valid reasons for preferring him after she had rejected Florentino Ariza without valid reasons. In fact, she loved him as little as she had loved the other one, but knew much less about him, and his letters did not have the fervor of the other one’s, nor had he given her so many moving proofs of his determination. The truth is that Juvenal Urbino’s suit had never been undertaken in the name of love, and it was curious, to say the least, that a militant Catholic like him would offer her only worldly goods: security, order, happiness, contiguous numbers that, once they were added together, might resemble love, almost be love. But they were not love, and these doubts increased her confusion, because she was also not convinced that love was really what she most needed to live.
这个弱点是如此明显，胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生及时发现了它对自己家庭的和睦具有何等威胁，所以每当他隐约看见它时，就赶紧对妻子说：“别担心，亲爱的，都是我的错。”没有什么比妻子突如其来的果敢决定更让他害怕了，而且他确信，这种决定的根源往往是某种负罪感。然而，拒绝弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨所带来的彷徨，绝非几句安慰就可以解决。有好几个月，费尔明娜·达萨总是在早晨打开阳台的窗子，思念着那个在空荡荡的小花园里窥视她的孤独幽灵。她望着那棵属于他的树，望着那条最不起眼的长凳，他曾坐在那里，一边想她一边读书，为她备受煎熬。接着，她又不得不关上窗，感叹道：“可怜的人。”直到后来，想要弥补过去已为时过晚，她甚至还为他不像她想象的那样坚韧而失望痛苦过，并且不时地感到某种迟来的渴望，盼能收到一封永远不曾到达的来信。但当她不得不正视自己嫁给胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺的决定时，她在一场更大的危机中被击垮了，因为她发现自己在没有任何有力的理由就拒绝了弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨后，也同样没有任何有力的理由更喜欢胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺。事实上，她喜欢后者的程度不比喜欢前者多，而了解则更少，他的信不像前者那样炽热，也没有做出过那么多能证明其决心的感人举动。事实上，胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺的追求从来不是用爱的语言表达的，而且奇怪的是——至少可以说是奇怪——像他那样一个天主教的卫士，向她提供的竟然仅限于世俗的好处：安全感、和谐和幸福，这些东西一旦相加，或许看似爱情，也几乎等于爱情。但它们终究不是爱情。这些疑虑增加了她的彷徨，因为她也并不坚信爱情当真就是她生活中最需要的东西。
In any case, the principal factor operating against Dr. Juvenal Urbino was his more than suspect resemblance to the ideal man that Lorenzo Daza had so wanted for his daughter. It was impossible not to see him as the creature of a paternal plot, even if in reality he was not, but Fermina Daza became convinced that he was from the time she saw him come to her house for a second, unsolicited medical call. In the end, her conversations with Cousin Hildebranda only confused her. Because of Cousin Hildebranda’s own situation as a victim, she tended to identify with Florentino Ariza, forgetting that perhaps Lorenzo Daza had arranged her visit so that she could use her influence in favor of Dr. Urbino. God alone knows what it cost Fermina Daza not to accompany her cousin when she went to meet Florentino Ariza in the telegraph office. She would have liked to see him again to present him with her doubts, to speak with him alone, to learn to kno w him well so that she could be certain that her impulsive decision would not precipitate her into another, more serious one: capitulation in her personal war against her father. But that is what she did at a crucial moment in her life, giving no importance whatsoever to the handsomeness of her suitor, or his legendary wealth, or his youthful glory, or any of his numerous virtues; rather, she was stunned by the fear of an opportunity slipping away, and by the imminence of her twenty-first birthday, which was her private time limit for surrendering to fate. That one moment was enough for her to make the decision that was foreseen in the laws of God and man: until death do you part. Then all her doubts vanished, and she could accomplish without remorse what reason indicated as the most decent thing to do: with no tears, she wiped away the memory of Florentino Ariza, she erased him completely, and in the space that he had occupied in her memory she allowed a field of poppies to bloom. All that she permitted herself was one final sigh that was deeper than usual: “Poor man!”
不管怎样，她反感胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生的主要原因，就是他和洛伦索·达萨一心想为女儿选择的理想男人太像了，都不仅仅是酷似——简直如出一辙。不可能不把他看作父亲密谋的同伙，即使事实上他并不是。自从看见他第二次不请自来为她看病，费尔明娜·达萨就认定了他与父亲相勾结。和表姐伊尔德布兰达谈过之后她更加迷茫了。表姐由于自己也是爱情的受害者，于是更倾向于认同弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨，甚至忘记了洛伦索·达萨让她来是为了给乌尔比诺医生说好话的。只有上帝知道费尔明娜·达萨做出了多大努力，才没有在表姐去电报室找弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨时陪她一起去。她的确想再见他一面，与他当面对质以消除疑问，和他单独聊一聊，深入地了解他，以确认她冲动的决定不会将自己推向另一个更严重的后果，即在和父亲单打独斗的战争中俯首投降。但她最终还是投降了，在她人生的千钧一发之际，丝毫没有考虑那位追求者的男性魅力、他传说中的财富、他的年轻有为，以及他那许多实实在在的美德中的任何一项，而只是因为害怕失去稍纵即逝的机会，在发现二十一岁已迫在眉睫时慌了手脚。二十一岁在她心里是向命运屈服的秘密界限。这个关键时刻足以让她按照上帝和凡人的戒律做出并承担自己的决定：至死不渝。于是，一切的疑虑都烟消云散，她毫无内疚地做出了理智指示她做的最体面的事：用一块没有泪水的海绵将有关弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的记忆彻底抹掉，让他在她记忆中所占据的那块空间里长出一片罂粟花。她唯一允许自己做的是和往日一样的一声深深叹息，最后一声：“可怜的人！”
Dr. Urbino, resigned to paying homage to his lineage, turned a deaf ear to her pleas, confident that the wisdom of God and his wife’s infinite capacity to adapt would resolve the situation. He was pained by the deterioration of his mother, whose joy in living had, at one time, sparked the desire to live in even the most skeptical. It was true: that beautiful, intelligent woman, with a human sensibility not at all common in her milieu, had been the soul and body of her social paradise for almost forty years. Widowhood had so embittered her that she did not seem the same person; it had made her flabby and sour and the enemy of the world. The only possible explanation for her decline was the rancor she felt because her husband had knowingly sacrificed himself for a black rabble, as she used to say, when the only fitting sacrifice would have been to survive for her sake. In any case, Fermina Daza’s happy marriage lasted as long as the honeymoon, and the only person who could help her to prevent its final wreckage was paralyzed by terror in the presence of his mother’s power. It was he, and not her imbecilic sisters-in-law and her half-mad mother-in-law, whom Fermina Daza blamed for the death trap that held her. She suspected too late that behind his professional authority and worldly charm, the man she had married was a hopeless weakling: a poor devil made bold by the social weight of his family names.
胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生甘愿屈从于家族礼教，对她的恳求置若罔闻，他相信上帝的智慧和妻子无限的适应能力定会将事情协调妥当。母亲的消沉让他痛心，曾几何时，她对生活的喜悦能给最缺乏信念的人注入希望。的确如此：这个美丽、智慧、敏锐得超凡脱俗的女人，在将近四十年中都是她那个社交天堂里的灵魂和主体，然而，守寡的痛苦让她自己都无法相信她还是原来的那个她，她变得懈怠，刻薄，与所有人为敌。对于这种蜕变，唯一可能的解释——就像她常说的那样——便是她怨恨丈夫明知故犯地为一群黑人牺牲了性命，而唯一正确的牺牲应该是为了她活下去。不管怎样，费尔明娜·达萨幸福的婚姻生活仅限于新婚旅行的那段日子，而那个唯一能帮她免于最终沉沦的人，却在母亲的淫威面前吓得浑身瘫软。是他，费尔明娜·达萨把这个套住她的死亡圈套全部归咎于他，而非那几个愚蠢的小姑子和那位半疯的婆婆。但已经太晚了，她到此时才怀疑，在职业权威和世俗的迷人外表下，她嫁的这个男人其实是个无药可救的懦夫：一个靠姓氏带来的社会地位而耀武扬威的可怜虫。
The most fearful doubts began, however, when she returned from her honeymoon. As soon as they opened the trunks, unpacked the furniture, and emptied the eleven chests she had brought in order to take possession as lady and mistress of the former palace of the Marquis de Casalduero, she realized with mortal vertigo that she was a prisoner in the wrong house and, even worse, with a man who was not. It took her six years to leave, the worst years of her life, when she was in despair because of the bitterness of Doña Blanca, her mother-in-law, and the mental lethargy of her sisters-in-law, who did not go to rot in a convent cell only because they already carried one inside themselves.
然而，最可怕的疑虑是从新婚旅行刚一回来开始的。他们才刚打开箱子，拆开家具包装，掏空她为胜任古老的卡萨尔杜埃罗侯爵府女主人和夫人角色而带回来的那十一只盒子，她就发现自己被囚禁在一个错误的人家，这让她险些晕死过去，而比这更糟的，是还和一个没法指望的男人关在一起。她用了六年才逃脱出来。那是她一生中最糟糕的六年，婆婆布兰卡夫人的刻薄和小姑子们的愚昧陈腐让她绝望，而如果说她的小姑子们竟没有活活腐烂在修道院的囚室里，那是因为她们已经把囚室带入自己的内心了。
She took refuge in her newborn son. She had felt him leave her body with a sensation of relief at freeing herself from something that did not belong to her, and she had been horrified at herself when she confirmed that she did not feel the slightest affection for that calf from her womb the midwife showed her in the raw, smeared with grease and blood and with the umbilical cord rolled around his neck. But in her loneliness in the palace she learned to know him, they learned to know each other, and she discovered with great delight that one does not love one’s children just because they are one’s children but because of the friendship formed while raising them. She came to despise anything and anyone who was not him in the house of her misfortune. She was depressed by the solitude, the cemetery garden, the squandering of time in the enormous, windowless rooms. During the endless nights she felt herself losing her mind, as the madwomen screamed in the asylum next door. She was ashamed of their custom of setting the banquet table every day with embroidered tablecloths, silver service, and funereal candelabra so that five phantoms could dine on café con leche and crullers. She detested the rosary at dusk, the affected table etiquette, the constant criticism of the way she held her silverware, the way she walked in mystical strides like a woman of the streets, the way she dressed as if she were in the circus, and even the rustic way she treated her husband and nursed her child without covering her breast with her mantilla. When she issued her first invitations to five o’clock tea, with little imperial cakes and candied flowers, in accordance with recent English fashion, Doña Blanca objected to serving remedies for sweating out a fever in her house instead of chocolate with aged cheese and rounded loaves of cassava bread. Not even dreams escaped her notice. One morning when Fermina Daza said she had dreamed about a naked stranger who walked through the salons of the palace scattering fistfuls of ashes, Doña Blanca cut her off:
她在新出世的儿子身上找到了寄托。当他从她的身体里滑出去时，她感到一种摆脱了某件不属于自己的东西的轻松。而当接生婆把活生生、浑身沾满油脂和血污、脐带还缠在脖子上的婴儿抱给她看时，她发现自己对这个从她腹中出来的小牛犊竟然没有一丁点儿感情，这把她自己也吓了一跳。然而，在孤独的侯爵府邸，她学会了认识他，母子俩相互熟识了，她欣喜万分地发现人们爱孩子并非因为他们是自己的孩子，而是因为养育中产生的情意。最终，在这个给她带来不幸的家里，除了儿子以外，她无法忍受任何事、任何人。内心的孤独，坟墓般的花园，以及整日在那一间间没有窗子的巨大房间里消磨时间，这一切都让她窒息。在没有尽头的夜晚，她觉得自己就要被隔壁疯人院里传来的疯女人的叫声击垮了。每天都要摆好宴会用的桌子，铺上绣花台布，摆上银制的餐具和仿佛在葬礼上用的那种大烛台，就为了让五个幽灵般的人用上一杯牛奶咖啡加奶酪饼当作晚餐，这种习惯让她感到羞耻。她诅咒每日下午的玫瑰经祷告，诅咒餐桌上的矫揉造作，诅咒众人对她无休止的批评：批评她拿刀叉的方式，批评她像街边女人一样卖弄风情地大步走路，批评她穿得像马戏团里的人，甚至还批评她像乡巴佬一样粗鲁地对待丈夫，以及给孩子喂奶时没有用披肩遮住胸口。当她第一次按照英国最新的时髦做法，邀人下午五点来家里喝茶，款以皇家饼干和花香蜜饯时，布兰卡夫人就出来反对在她的家里喝那些发汗时当药用的饮品，认为应该喝巧克力，配烤奶酪和木薯面包圈。甚至连她做的梦也逃不过她的指责。一天早上，费尔明娜·达萨说自己梦见一个陌生男人赤身裸体地在侯爵府邸的大厅里走来走去，还一把一把地撒灰。
“A decent woman cannot have that kind of dream.”
“正派女人不会做这种梦。”
Along with the feeling of always being in someone else’s house came two even greater misfortunes. One was the almost daily diet of eggplant in all its forms, which Doña Blanca refused to vary out of respect for her dead husband, and which Fermina Daza refused to eat. She had despised eggplants ever since she was a little girl, even before she had tasted them, because it always seemed to her that they were the color of poison. Only now she had to admit that in this case something had changed for the better in her life, because at the age of five she had said the same thing at the table, and her father had forced her to eat the entire casserole intended for six people. She thought she was going to die, first because she vomited pulverized eggplant and then because of the cupful of castor oil she had to take as a cure for the punishment. Both things were confused in her memory as a single purgative, as much for the taste as for her terror of the poison, and at the abominable lunches in the palace of the Marquis de Casalduero she had to look away so as not to repay their kindness with the icy nausea of castor oil.
除了寄人篱下的感觉，还有两件更不幸的事。一是每天的食谱里都有各式各样做法的茄子，布兰卡夫人为了尊重死去的丈夫不肯改变这一习惯，而费尔明娜·达萨则拒绝吃。从小时候起，在还没有尝过之前，她就讨厌茄子，因为她总觉得它的颜色像毒药。只不过这一次，不管怎样，她不得不承认生活中的某些东西已经向好的方向转变了，五岁时，她曾在餐桌上说过同样的话，而父亲则强迫她吃下了为六个人准备的整整一锅茄子。当时她相信自己就要死了，先是因为她把已经变成碎末的茄子稀里哗啦地吐了出来，接着又因为大家为了医治她而强迫她灌下一碗蓖麻油。这两样东西，不仅因其味道，更因她对毒药的恐惧，在她记忆中被混作同一种类似泻药的东西。在卡萨尔杜埃罗侯爵府邸令人作呕的午餐中，她不得不移开自己的视线，以免回想起蓖麻油造成的那种令人全身发凉的恶心。
The other misfortune was the harp. One day, very conscious of what she meant, Doña Blanca had said: “I do not believe in decent women who do not know how to play the piano.” It was an order that even her son tried to dispute, for the best years of his childhood had been spent in the galley slavery of piano lessons, although as an adult he would be grateful for them. He could not imagine his wife, with her character, subjected to the same punishment at the age of twenty-five. But the only concession he could wring from his mother, with the puerile argument that it was the instrument of the angels, was to substitute the harp for the piano. And so it was that they brought a magnificent harp from Vienna that seemed to be gold and sounded as if it were, and that was one of the most valued heirlooms in the Museum of the City until it and all it contained were consumed in flames. Fermina Daza submitted to this deluxe prison sentence in an attempt to avoid catastrophe with one final sacrifice. She began to study with a teacher of teachers, whom they brought for that purpose from the city of Mompox, and who died unexpectedly two weeks later, and she continued for several years with the best musician at the seminary, whose gravedigger’s breath distorted her arpeggios.
另一件不幸的事是竖琴。一天，布兰卡夫人说：“我不相信一个不会弹钢琴的女人会是一个体面的女人。”这很显然是有的放矢。但这次连她的儿子都表示反对，因为他最好的那段童年岁月就是在苦役般的钢琴课上度过的，尽管成年后他对此心存感激，但他无法想象自己的妻子也遭受同样的刑罚，她才二十五岁，而且又个性十足。但他从母亲那里唯一争取到的，不过就是把钢琴换成了竖琴，并且用的是一个极为天真的理由，即竖琴是天使的乐器。于是，他们从维也纳弄来一把精美无比的竖琴，看上去就像金子做的，声音也像。它后来成为了城市博物馆中最珍贵的文物之一，直到这座博物馆连同里面的一切被一场大火吞没。费尔明娜·达萨屈从于这项奢侈的刑罚，尽力用最后的牺牲避免与婆婆冲突。她先是师从一位特意从蒙波斯城请来的顶级大师，可十五天后他竟突然去世了。之后，她又跟着神学院最好的乐师学了好几年，这位老师掘墓人般的气质让她的和弦都走了音。
She herself was surprised at her obedience. For although she did not admit it in her innermost thoughts, or in the silent arguments she had with her husband during the hours they had once devoted to love, she had been caught up more quickly than she had believed in the tangle of conventions and prejudices of her new world. At first she had a ritual phrase that affirmed her freedom of thought: “To hell with a fan when the wind is blowing.” But later, jealous of her carefully won privileges, fearful of embarrassment and scorn, she demonstrated her willingness to endure even humiliation in the hope that God would at last take pity on Doña Blanca, who never tired of begging Him in her prayers to send her death.
她对自己的顺从感到惊讶。虽然内心深处，以及在和丈夫以前用来相爱如今却用来无声地争吵的时间里，她始终都不曾承认这一点，即她已陷入这个新世界里常规与偏见的乱麻之中，比她自己想象的要快得多。起初，她常爱用一句话来坚持自己独立思考的自由：“让扇子见鬼去吧，现在已经是微风的季节了。”但后来，她开始珍惜自己来之不易的特权，开始惧怕丢脸和别人的嘲弄，于是表现出准备承受一切的样子，甚至包括屈辱。但她心中抱着一个希望，那就是上帝最终能怜悯布兰卡夫人，应答她在祈祷中孜孜不倦地恳求上帝赐她一死的要求。
Dr. Urbino justified his own weakness with grave arguments, not even asking himself if they were in conflict with the Church. He would not admit that the difficulties with his wife had their origin in the rarefied air of the house, but blamed them on the very nature of matrimony: an absurd invention that could exist only by the infinite grace of God. It was against all scientific reason for two people who hardly knew each other, with no ties at all between them, with different characters, different upbringings, and even different genders, to suddenly find themselves committed to living together, to sleeping in the same bed, to sharing two destinies that perhaps were fated to go in opposite directions. He would say: “The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast.” And worst of all was theirs, arising out of two opposing classes, in a city that still dreamed of the return of the Viceroys. The only possible bond was something as improbable and fickle as love, if there was any, and in their case there was none when they married, and when they were on the verge of inventing it, fate had done nothing more than confront them with reality.
乌尔比诺医生找了些宏大的理由来为自己的懦弱辩解，甚至都不自问一下它们是否有悖他的信仰。他不承认自己和妻子的矛盾源于家中压抑的气氛，而是认为那源于婚姻本身的性质：一项荒谬的、只能靠上帝的无限仁慈才得以存在的发明。两个几乎完全互不了解的人，没有任何血缘关系，性格不同，文化不同，甚至性别都不相同，却突然间不得不承诺生活在一起，睡在同一张床上，分享彼此也许注定有所分歧的命运，这一切本身就是完全违背科学的。他说：“婚姻的问题在于，它终结于每晚做爱之后，却在第二天早餐之前又必须重新建立起来。”而他们之间的婚姻则更糟，他说，因为两人来自两个敌对的阶层，却又生活在这样一座依旧梦想着回到总督时代的城市。唯一像水泥一样把他们黏合在一起的，却是爱情这种既不可能、又反复无常的东西——如果它果真存在的话。但对他们来说，两人结婚时是没有爱情的，而就在他们差一点要把它创造出来时，命运所做的却只是让他们面对现实。
That was the condition of their lives during the period of the harp. They had left behind the delicious coincidences of her coming in while he was taking a bath, when, despite the arguments and the poisonous eggplant, and despite his demented sisters and the mother who bore them, he still had enough love to ask her to soap him. She began to do it with the crumbs of love that still remained from Europe, and both allowed themselves to be betrayed by memories, softening without wanting to, desiring each other without saying so, and at last they would die of love on the floor, spattered with fragrant suds, as they heard the maids talking about them in the laundry room: “If they don’t have more children it’s because they don’t fuck.” From time to time, when they came home from a wild fiesta, the nostalgia crouching behind the door would knock them down with one blow of its paw, and then there would be a marvelous explosion in which everything was the way it used to be and for five minutes they were once again the uninhibited lovers of their honeymoon.
这就是竖琴时期他们的生活状态。那些令人愉快的偶然片段已成了往事：曾经，虽然他们之间争吵不断，虽然她每天都要吃毒茄子，虽然他的妹妹们疯疯癫癫，虽然他的母亲依然如故，但如果她在他洗澡时走进浴室，他仍有足够的爱来邀请她为他擦香皂。而她会怀着欧洲之旅剩余的爱的碎屑顺从地为他效劳。接着，两人会忘掉种种不快，不由自主地心软，无声地渴求起对方来，最终在地上爱得死去活来，浑身沾满芳香的泡沫，耳朵里却听着女仆在洗衣房里议论：“他们没有再生孩子，是因为他们不再做那事了。”有时，他们从疯狂的节日庆典回到家，在门后伺机而动的怀旧之情也会一下子将他们扑倒在地，于是就会有一次美妙的爆发，一切又回到往昔，五分钟后，他们就又像蜜月中连门襟都无暇扣上的恋人们一样了。
But except for those rare occasions, one of them was always more tired than the other when it was time to go to bed. She would dawdle in the bathroom, rolling her cigarettes in perfumed paper, smoking alone, relapsing into her consolatory love as she did when she was young and free in her own house, mistress of her own body. She always had a headache, or it was too hot, always, or she pretended to be asleep, or she had her period again, her period, always her period. So much so that Dr. Urbino had dared to say in class, only for the relief of unburdening himself without confession, that after ten years of marriage women had their periods as often as three times a week.
但除了这些极少数的情况，一般到了睡觉的时候，他们中总有一个比另一个更为疲倦。她在浴室里耗时间，用香纸卷起一支支烟，独自抽着，又像年轻时独自在家那样，重新陷入自我慰藉的爱中，又成了自己身体的唯一主人。她总是头痛，要么就抱怨天气太热；总是装睡，要么就是又来了月经，月经，永远是月经。以至于乌尔比诺医生为了发泄一下难言的苦衷，竟然在课堂上说，结婚十年后，女人一星期甚至能来三次月经。
Misfortune piled on misfortune, and in the worst of those years Fermina Daza had to face what was bound to come sooner or later: the truth of her father’s fabulous and always mysterious dealings. The Governor of the Province made an appointment with Juvenal Urbino in his office to bring him up to date on the excesses of his father-in-law, which he summed up in a single sentence: “There is no law, human or divine, that this man has not ignored.” Some of his most serious schemes had been carried out in the shadow of his son-in-law’s prestige, and it would have been difficult to believe that he and his wife knew nothing about them. Realizing that the only reputation to protect was his own, because it was the only one still standing, Dr. Juvenal Urbino intervened with all the weight of his prestige, and he succeeded in covering up the scandal with his word of honor. So that Lorenzo Daza left the country on the first boat, never to return. He went back to his native country as if it were one of those little trips one takes from time to time to ward off nostalgia, and at the bottom of that appearance there was some truth: for a long time he had boarded ships from his country just to drink a glass of water from the cisterns filled with the rains of the village where he was born. He left without having his arm twisted, protesting his innocence, and still trying to convince his son-in-law that he had been the victim of a political conspiracy. He left crying for his girl, as he had called Fermina Daza since her marriage, crying for his grandson, for the land in which he had become rich and free and where, on the basis of his shady dealings, he had won the power to turn his daughter into an exquisite lady. He left old and sick, but still he lived much longer than any of his victims might have desired. Fermina Daza could not repress a sigh of relief when she received the news of his death, and in order to avoid questions she did not wear mourning, but for several months she wept with mute fury without knowing why when she locked herself in the bathroom to smoke, and it was because she was crying for him.
祸不单行，费尔明娜·达萨不得不在她最糟糕的岁月里面对自己怎么也躲不掉、迟早都要来的事：她父亲那些无人知晓、神话般的生意背后的真相。省长在办公室召见了胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生，把他岳父无法无天的行径一股脑儿全告诉了他，最后一言以蔽之：“凡天上人间的法律，没有什么是这个家伙不曾冒犯过的。”其中有几件最严重的纠纷，是他依仗着女婿的权势做的，让人很难相信这位女婿和他的妻子能够独善其身。鉴于目标其实是保住自己的名誉，因为也就剩他的名声还站得住脚了，胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生动用了所有的权力，最终用他的担保掩盖了丑闻。就这样，洛伦索·达萨坐着最早的一班船离开了这个国家，并将永远不再回来。他回到他的故土去了，表现得就像以往为了慰藉思乡之情而不时地进行一次短期旅行一样，但这也不完全是自欺欺人：从很早以前开始，他便常常登上祖国的轮船，仅仅是为了喝一杯水箱里装着的来自故乡的泉水。他走了，没有俯首认错，而是坚称自己无辜，并试图让女婿相信自己是政治阴谋的牺牲品。他走了，为他的姑娘而痛哭流涕——自从费尔明娜·达萨嫁人后，他一直这么叫她——还为他的外孙而哭，为这片土地而哭，在这里，他变得富有、自由，并靠着不清不白的生意，成功地把他的姑娘变成了高雅的夫人。他走了，苍老且带着一身病痛，但他之后还活了很久，远比那些因他而遭殃的人希望的要长久得多。当他去世的消息传来时，费尔明娜·达萨不禁舒了一口气。为了避免他人问起，她没有为他戴孝，但接下来好几个月，每当她把自己关在浴室中抽烟时，便会带着一股无名火哭泣起来，她是在为父亲而哭。
The most absurd element in their situation was that they never seemed so happy in public as during those years of misery. For this was the time of their greatest victories over the subterranean hostility of a milieu that resisted accepting them as they were: different and modern, and for that reason transgressors against the traditional order. That, however, had been the easy part for Fermina Daza. Life in the world, which had caused her so much uncertainty before she was familiar with it, was nothing more than a system of atavistic contracts, banal ceremonies, preordained words, with which people entertained each other in society in order not to commit murder. The dominant sign in that paradise of provincial frivolity was fear of the unknown. She had defined it in a simpler way: “The problem in public life is learning to overcome terror; the problem in married life is learning to overcome boredom.” She had made this sudden dis covery with the clarity of a revelation when, trailing her endless bridal train behind her, she had entered the vast salon of the Social Club, where the air was thin with the mingled scent of so many flowers, the brilliance of the waltzes, the tumult of perspiring men and tremulous women who looked at her not knowing how they were going to exorcise the dazzling menace that had come to them from the outside world. She had just turned twenty-one and had done little more than leave her house to go to school, but with one look around her she understood that her adversaries were not convulsed with hatred but paralyzed by fear. Instead of frightening them even more, as she was already doing, she had the compassion to help them learn to know her. They were no different from what she wanted them to be, just as in the case of cities, which did not seem better or worse to her, but only as she made them in her heart. Despite the perpetual rain, the sordid merchants, and the Homeric vulgarity of its carriage drivers, she would always remember Paris as the most beautiful city in the world, not because of what it was or was not in reality, but because it was linked to the memory of her happiest years. Dr. Urbino, for his part, commanded respect with the same weapons that were used against him, except that his were wielded with more intelligence and with calculated solemnity. Nothing happened without them: civic exhibitions, the Poetic Festival, artistic events, charity raffles, patriotic ceremonies, the first journey in a balloon. They were there for everything, and almost always from its inception and at the forefront. During those unfortunate years no one could have imagined anyone happier than they or a marriage more harmonious than theirs.
这对夫妻最为荒谬的是，在那段不幸的岁月里，他们在公众面前却表现得无比幸福。实际上，那正是他们战胜周围隐藏的敌意，取得最大胜利的几年。人们不甘心接受他们的那副样子：与众不同，行事新派，从而与传统秩序格格不入。不过，这对于费尔明娜·达萨来说却是手到擒来的事。所谓的世俗生活，虽然在她了解之前曾让她有过许多疑虑，但其实那不过是一套沿自传统的规矩，庸俗的仪式，事先想好的言词，在此之下，人们彼此消遣，为的是不致互相杀戳。在这个轻浮的世俗天堂，最显著的特征就是对陌生事物的恐惧。她用一种更为简单的方式为它下了定义：“社交生活的关键在于学会控制恐惧，夫妻生活的关键在于学会控制厌恶。”自从拖着没有尽头的新娘头纱，步入社交俱乐部宽阔的大厅时，她就突然清楚地发现了这一点。厅里弥漫着无数鲜花混在一起的香气，华尔兹乐曲绕梁飞旋，男人们汗水涔涔，女人们浑身颤抖，他们看着她，不知如何才能清除这个外部世界来的令人眩晕的眼中钉。所有这一切让空气变得稀薄。她刚刚年满二十一岁，除了去学校，几乎没有出过家门，但她仅仅环顾了一眼，便明白她的对手并非因仇恨而生出胆怯，而是因惧怕而茫然无措。她没有继续吓唬她们，而是大发慈悲，帮助她们了解她。没有一个人出乎她的意料之外，就像她对那些城市的看法一样，她没有觉得哪座更好或哪座更糟，它们只是和她心里想象的一模一样。比如巴黎，尽管那里阴雨连绵，尽管那里的店主个个贪吝，车夫个个粗鲁，她仍将永远在记忆中把那里当作人间最美的城市，这与它实际是否如此毫不相干，而只是因为它与她最幸福岁月的回忆紧密相连。至于胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生，他会以其人之道还治其人之身，而且手段更为机敏也更加堂皇。没有什么事少得了他们的参与：市民郊游、花会、艺术活动、慈善抽奖、爱国演出，乃至第一次气球旅行。到处都有他们的身影，他们也永远是活动的发起者，且永远身先士卒。在他们那些不幸的岁月里，任谁也无法想象有谁能比他们更幸福，有哪对夫妻比他们更般配。
The house left by her father gave Fermina Daza a refuge from the asphyxiation of the family palace. As soon as she could escape from public view, she would go in secret to the Park of the Evangels, and there she would visit with new friends and some old ones from school or the painting classes: an innocent substitute for infidelity. She spent tranquil hours as a single mother, surrounded by what remained of her girlhood memories. She replaced the perfumed crows, found cats on the street and placed them in the care of Gala Placidia, who by this time was old and somewhat slowed by rheumatism but still willing to bring the house back to life. She opened the sewing room where Florentino Ariza saw her for the first time, where Dr. Juvenal Urbino had her stick out her tongue so that he could try to read her heart, and she turned it into a sanctuary of the past. One winter afternoon she went to close the balcony because a heavy storm was threatening, and she saw Florentino Ariza on his bench under the almond trees in the little park, with his father’s suit altered to fit him and his book open on his lap, but this time she did not see him as she had seen him by accident on various occasions, but at the age at which he remained in her memory. She was afraid that the vision was an omen of death, and she was grief-stricken. She dared to tell herself that perhaps she would have been happier with him, alone with him in that house she had restored for him with as much love as he had felt when he restored his house for her, and that simple hypothesis dismayed her because it permitted her to realize the extreme of unhappiness she had reached. Then she summoned her last strength and obliged her husband to talk to her without evasion, to confront her, to argue with her, to cry with her in rage at the loss of paradise, until they heard the last rooster crow, and the light filtered in through the lace curtains of the palace, and the sun rose, and her husband, puffy with so much talk, exhausted with lack of sleep, his heart fortified with so much weeping, laced his shoes, tightened his belt, fastened everything that remained to him of his manhood, and told her yes, my love, they were going to look for the love they had lost in Europe: starting tomorrow and forever after. It was such a firm decision that he arranged with the Treasury Bank, his general administrator, for the immediate liquidation of the vast family fortune, which was dispersed, and had been from the very beginning, in all kinds of businesses, investments, and long-term, sacred bonds, and which only he knew was not as excessive as legend would have it: just large enough so one did not need to think about it. What there was of it was converted into stamped gold, to be invested little by little in his foreign bank accounts until he and his wife would own nothing in this harsh country, not even a plot of ground to die on.
父亲留下的房子成了费尔明娜·达萨逃避那座令人窒息的家庭宫殿的避难所。一离开公众视线，她便悄悄躲到福音花园。她在那里接待新朋友，会会学校和图画课的老朋友，以此作为不忠的某种纯洁的替代品。她会像独身母亲似的平静地度过几个小时，细细咀嚼儿时的回忆。她又买了香乌鸦，还从街上捡回了几只猫，把它们交给加拉·普拉西迪娅照料。此时的加拉·普拉西迪娅已经年迈，而且因为风湿行动有些不便，却满怀着重建这个家的热情。费尔明娜又重新启用了缝纫室。在这里，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨第一次见到她，也是在这里，胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生让她伸出舌头，试图窥测她的内心。于是，她把缝纫室当成了回忆过去的圣地。一个冬季的下午，她赶在暴风雨呼啸而至之前去关阳台的窗子，竟看见弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨坐在小花园杏树下的那条长凳上，穿着那件改小了的父亲的礼服，膝头放着一本打开的书。但她看见的，并非之前好几次在不同场合偶遇他时的模样，而是他留在她记忆中的那个多年前的模样。她害怕那是死神送来的通知，伤心不已。她竟对自己说，也许和他在一起她会更加幸福，和他单独待在这所她以爱为他整修的房子里，就像他也以同样的爱为她整修了房子一样。单是这个假想就让她大惊失色，她意识到自己的不幸已到了何种程度。于是，她打点起最后一丝力气，逼迫丈夫不再闪烁其词，与她面对面地争吵，并和她一起为失去的天堂痛哭，直到听见最后一次鸡鸣，曙光照进绣花的窗帘，太阳灼烧起来。丈夫因说了太多话而脸庞肿胀，因没有睡觉而筋疲力尽，因哭得太多而心坚意决。他系紧靴带，又扎紧腰带，束紧一个男人所剩下的全部，对她说，行，亲爱的，咱们去寻找在欧洲丢失的爱情：明天就走，不再回来。他决心坚定，和他的资产总代理——财富银行达成了协议，立即清算丰厚的家产，它们从一开始就分散在各种生意、投资、神圣债券和长期债券中，只有他自己清楚它们并不像传说的那样无穷无尽，只不过是够他们衣食无忧而已。所有的财产都会被变卖成刻有印记的黄金，一点一点地转到国外的银行去，直到他和妻子在这片无情的国土上连手掌大的葬身之地都不剩为止。
And yet Florentino Ariza actually existed, contrary to what she had decided to believe. He was on the pier where the French ocean liner was docked when she arrived with her husband and child in the landau drawn by the golden horses, and he saw them emerge as he had so often seen the m at public ceremonies: perfect. They were leaving with their son, raised in such a way that one could already see what he would be like as an adult: and so he was. Juvenal Urbino greeted Florentino Ariza with a joyous wave of his hat: “We’re off to conquer Flanders.” Fermina Daza nodded, and Florentino Ariza took off his hat and made a slight bow, and she looked at him without the slightest compassion for the premature ravages of baldness. There he was, just as she saw him: the shadow of someone she had never met.
但与她猜想的不同，事实上，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨还活着。当她和丈夫、儿子乘着金色四轮马车到达法国远洋轮船的码头时，他就在那里看着他们从车上走下来，与他曾无数次在公共庆典上看见他们的样子分毫不差：依旧是那么完美无瑕。他们带着儿子同行，从那男孩现在的教养便能看出，他成年后将会是什么模样。胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生高兴地向弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨脱帽致意：“我们要去远征弗兰德。”费尔明娜·达萨向他点了点头。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨脱下帽子，微微鞠躬。她看着他，对他那过早谢顶的惨状没有半点同情的表示。他就像她所看见的那样，是某个她从不认识的人的影子。
These were not the best times for Florentino Ariza either. In addition to his work, which grew more and more intense, and the tedium of his furtive hunting, and the dead calm of the years, there was also the final crisis of Tránsito Ariza, whose mind had been left almost without memories, almost a blank, to the point where she would turn to him at times, see him reading in the armchair he always sat in, and ask him in surprise: “And whose son are you?” He would always reply with the truth, but she would interrupt him again without delay:
那段日子也不是弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨最走运的时期。工作日益繁重，对偷欢之事也日益厌倦，岁月蹉跎。此外，特兰西多·阿里萨也已到了生命的最后时光，她已丧失了记忆：几乎是一片空白。甚至有几次，她转向儿子，看着他坐在椅子上看书，吃惊地问道：“你是谁的孩子？”他总是如实回答，但她又会立刻打断他。
“And tell me something, my boy,” she would ask. “Who am I?”
“告诉我一件事，孩子，”她问他说，“我是谁？”
She had grown so fat that she could not move, and she spent the day in the notions shop, where there was no longer anything to sell, primping and dressing in finery from the time she awoke with the first roosters until the following dawn, for she slept very little. She would put garlands of flowers on her head, paint her lips, powder her face and arms, and at last she would ask whoever was with her, “Who am I now?” The neighbors knew that she always expected the same reply: “You are Little Roachie Martínez.” This identity, stolen from a character in a children’s story, was the only one that satisfied her. She continued to rock and to fan herself with long pink feathers, until she began all over again: the crown of paper flowers, violet on her eyelids, red on her lips, dead white on her face. And again the question to whoever was nearby: “Who am I now?” When she became the laughingstock of the neighborhood, Florentino Ariza had the counter and the storage drawers of the old notions shop dismantled in one night, and the street door sealed, and the space arranged just as he had heard her describe Roachie Martínez’s bedroom, and she never asked again who she was.
她已经胖得不能动了，整日待在杂货铺里，虽然那里已经没有任何东西可卖。她在第一遍鸡叫时便起床，然后一直到第二天黎明，她都在梳妆打扮，因为她只睡很少几个小时。她把花冠戴在头上，涂上口红，在脸上和胳膊上擦上粉，然后逢人就问自己打扮得怎么样。邻居们都知道她永远只期待一个回答：“你是小蟑螂马丁内斯。”这是从童话里偷借来的身份，却是唯一能让她满意的答复。她继续摇晃着身子，扇着一把粉红色大羽毛做的扇子，直到把一切再从头来过：戴上纸做的花冠，把麝香涂在眼皮上，涂上口红，脸上擦上一层干硬的铅白粉。她又一次问身边的随便什么人：“我打扮得怎么样？”当她成了邻居们的笑柄，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨一夜之间拆掉了这间古老杂货铺的柜台和所有带抽屉的柜子，封死了朝街的大门，并按母亲的描述，把这个地方装饰成了小蟑螂马丁内斯的卧室。从此，她再没问过别人她是谁。
At the suggestion of Uncle Leo XII, he found an older woman to take care of her, but the poor thing was always more asleep than awake, and at times she gave the impression that she, too, forgot who she was. So that Florentino Ariza would stay home from the time he left the office until he managed to put his mother to sleep. He no longer played dominoes at the Commercial Club, and for a long time he did not visit the few women friends he had continued to see, for something very profound had changed in his heart after his dreadful meeting with Olimpia Zuleta.
他听从莱昂十二叔叔的建议，找了个上年纪的女人照顾母亲，但这个可怜的女人睡的时候总是比醒的时候多，有几次她似乎也忘了自己是谁。于是，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨一出办公室便回家，直到把母亲哄睡着为止。他不再去商业俱乐部玩多米诺骨牌，很长一段时间里，也没有再去见那为数不多的几位常会面的老相好，因为自从和奥林皮娅·苏莱塔那段可怕的交往后，他内心深藏的某种东西起了变化。
It was as if he had been struck by lightning. Florentino Ariza had just taken Uncle Leo XII home during one of those October storms that would leave us reeling, when he saw from his carriage a slight, very agile girl in a dress covered with organza ruffles that looked like a bridal gown. He saw her running in alarm from one side of the street to the other, because the wind had snatched away her parasol and was blowing it out to sea. He rescued her in his carriage and went out of his way to take her to her house, an old converted hermitage that faced the open sea and whose patio, visible from the street, was full of pigeon coops. On the way, she told him that she had been married less than a year to a man who sold trinkets in the market, whom Florentino Ariza had often seen on his company’s boats unloading cartons of all kinds of salable merchandise and with a multitude of pigeons in a wicker cage of the sort mothers used on riverboats for carrying infants. Olimpia Zuleta seemed to belong to the wasp family, not only because of her high buttocks and meager bosom, but because of everything about her: her hair like copper wire, her freckles, her round, animated eyes that were farther apart than normal, and her melodious voice that she used only for saying intelligent and amusing things. Florentino Ariza thought she was more witty than attractive, and he forgot her as soon as he left her at her house, where she lived with her husband, his father, and other members of his family.
那是一次突发性事件。当时正赶上十月那几场让我们休养生息的暴风雨中的一场，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨刚把莱昂十二叔叔送回家，就从车里看见一个娇小灵巧的姑娘，身上穿着一身满是荷叶边、像极了婚纱的薄纱衣裳，惊慌失措地从马路的一边跑到另一边，因为狂风掀翻了她的雨伞，卷着它在海边飞来飞去。他把她救上车，掉转车头，送她回了家。她家是一座小教堂改建的，依海而立，从街上就能看见院子里到处都是鸽子屋。路上，她告诉他自己刚刚嫁给一个在市场卖日用品的商贩。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨在公司的船上见过这个人很多次，见他卸下一箱箱各式各样的旧货来卖，还有一大群鸽子，装在一个藤条编的笼子里，就像那些内河船上的母亲用来放新生儿的笼子一样。奥林皮娅·苏莱塔看上去就像来自胡蜂家族似的，不只因为她那上翘的屁股和娇小的上半身，而且因为她的全部：如铜丝一般的头发，脸上长满雀斑，两只活泼的圆眼睛之间的距离比一般人的都大些，声音尖细，恰好适合她那机智有趣的谈吐。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨觉得，与其说她诱人，倒不如说她滑稽，送她到家后，他很快就把她忘了。她和丈夫、公公以及其他几个家庭成员一起生活。
The next afternoon, just at dinnertime, the beautiful pigeon fancier saw the gift carrier pigeon in the dovecote and thought it had escaped. But when she picked it up to examine it, she realized that there was a slip of paper inside the ring: a declaration of love. It was the first time that Florentino Ariza had left a written trace, and it would not be the last, although on this occasion he had been prudent enough not to sign his name. He was going into his house the following afternoon, a Wednesday, when a street boy handed him the same pigeon in a cage, with a memorized message that the pigeon lady hereby sends you this, and says to tell you to please keep the cage locked because if not it will fly away again and this is the last time she will send it back. He had no idea how to interpret this: either the pigeon had lost the note en route, or the pigeonkeeper had decided to play innocent, or she had returned the pigeon so that he could send it back to her again. If that was true, however, the natural thing would have been for her to return the pigeon with a reply.
第二天下午，同样是喂食的时候，美丽的养鸽女看见送出去的鸽子又回到了鸽子屋。她以为是它偷跑回来的。可当她抓住它检查时，发现金属环上缠着一张纸条：一封求爱信。这是弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨第一次留下字迹，却绝非最后一次，虽然这一次，他出于谨慎没有签名。接下来的一天是星期三，下午他正要进家门时，一个街上的小孩把装在笼里的那同一只鸽子交给他，并带口信说，是鸽子夫人让他来的，并让他嘱咐一声，请用笼子把它关好，否则它还会飞走，而这是她最后一次把它送回来了。他不知道对这一切应作何解释；或许鸽子在路上把信弄丢了，或许是养鸽女在装糊涂，又或许她把鸽子送来是为了让他再送回去。不过，如果是最后一种情况，按理说她应该在送鸽子的同时附上一封回信。
A few days later he saw her husband at the port, loading merchandise instead of unloading it, and when the ship weighed anchor Florentino heard, with great clarity, the voice of the devil in his ear. That afternoon, after taking Uncle Leo XII home, he passed by Olimpia Zuleta’s house as if by accident, and he saw her over the fence, feeding the noisy pigeons. He called to her from his carriage: “How much for a pigeon?” She recognized him and answered in a merry voice: “They are not for sale.” He asked: “Then what must I do to get one?” Still feeding the pigeons, she replied: “You drive her back to the coop when you find her lost in a storm.” So that Florentino Ariza arrived home that night with a thank-you gift from Olimpia Zuleta: a carrier pigeon with a metal ring around its leg.
几天后，他在港口看见了她的丈夫，这一回他正往船上装货，而非卸货。船起锚时，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨清清楚楚地听到耳边响起了魔鬼的声音。那天下午，送莱昂十二叔叔回家后，他佯装偶然路过奥林皮娅·苏莱塔家，从围墙外看见她正在喂那群乱哄哄的鸽子。他隔着墙从车上冲她喊道：“鸽子多少钱一只？”她认出了他，高兴地回答说：“不卖。”他又问：“那怎么才能得到一只呢？”她一边继续喂食，一边答道：“在大雨天碰见养鸽子的女人，用车把她送回家。”就这样，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨回家时，带着一份奥林皮娅·苏莱塔道谢的礼物：一只腿上拴着金属环的信鸽。
On Saturday morning, after much thought, Florentino Ariza sent back the pigeon with another unsigned letter. This time he did not have to wait until the next day. In the afternoon the same boy brought it back in another cage, with a message that said she hereby sends back the pigeon that flew away again, and that the day before yesterday she returned it out of courtesy and this time she returns it out of pity, but that now it is really true that she will not return it again if it flies away another time. Tránsito Ariza played with the pigeon until very late, she took it out of the cage, she rocked it in her arms, she tried to lull it to sleep with children’s songs, and then suddenly Florentino Ariza realized that in the ring around its leg was a little piece of paper with one line written on it: I do not accept anonymous letters. Florentino Ariza read it, his heart wild with joy as if this were the culmination of his first adventure, and he did not sleep a wink that night as he tossed and turned with impatience. Very early the next day, before he left for the office, he once again set the pigeon free, carrying a love note that bore his clear signature, and he also put in the ring the freshest, reddest, and most fragrant rose from his garden.
星期六早晨，思来想去之后，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨又派鸽子送去了一封没有签名的信。这一次，没等到第二天，当天下午就由同一个小孩把装在另一只笼子里的鸽子送了回来，并捎来口信说，前天把它送回来是出于礼貌，而这一次是出于遗憾，但如果他再让它飞走，就真的不会再送回来了。特兰西多·阿里萨逗鸽子玩到很晚，把它从笼子里抓出来，放在臂弯里，冲它咕咕叫，还试图哼儿歌哄它睡觉。突然，她发现鸽子脚上的金属环里夹着一张纸条，上面只有一行字：我不接受匿名信。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨狂喜地读完纸条，仿佛回到初次冒险的高潮。那晚，他几乎无法入睡，心情烦躁地翻来覆去。第二天一早，在去办公室之前，他再一次放飞鸽子，它身上带着一封清清楚楚签着他名字的情书，除此之外，他还在金属环上别了一枝他花园中最新鲜、最火红、最芬芳的玫瑰。
Six months after their first meeting, they found themselves at last in a cabin on a riverboat that was being painted at the docks. It was a marvelous afternoon. Olimpia Zuleta had the joyous love of a startled pigeon fancier, and she preferred to remain naked for several hours in a slow-moving repose that was, for her, as loving as love itself. The cabin was dismantled, half painted, and they would take the odor of turpentine away with them in the memory of a happy afternoon. In a sudden inspiration, Florentino Ariza opened a can of red paint that was within reach of the bunk, wet his index finger, and painted the pubis of the beautiful pigeon fancier with an arrow of blood pointing south, and on her belly the words: This pussy is mine. That same night, Olimpia Zuleta undressed in front of her husband, having forgotten what was scrawled there, and he did not say a word, his breathing did not even change, nothing, but he went to the bathroom for his razor while she was putting on her nightgown, and in a single slash he cut her throat.
邂逅六个月后，他们终于在码头边一艘正在重新油漆的内河船的舱室里私会了。奥林皮娅·苏莱塔的爱欢喜愉悦，是活泼的养鸽女的爱情。她喜欢光着身子，一待就是好几个小时，处在一种缓慢的休憩状态之中，这种休憩对她来说就像爱情一样，同样是柔情蜜意的。舱室已被拆得七零八落，油漆才刷了一半，松节油的味道很适合留存在一个幸福下午的回忆之中。忽然，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨灵机一动，打开一罐从简易床上触手可及的红油漆的盖子，用食指蘸漆，在美丽的养鸽女的小腹上画了一个朝下的箭头，并在肚皮上写下了一行标牌似的字：这小东西是我的。当晚，奥林皮娅·苏莱塔忘了那行字，在丈夫面前脱掉衣服。丈夫一句话都没说，甚至连呼吸都没有改变，什么都没有做，只是在她穿睡衣的时候，到浴室取来刮脸用的刀子，一刀割断了她的喉咙。
It was not that easy. After three months of pursuit, the beautiful pigeon fancier was still sending the same answer: I am not one of those women. But she never refused to accept his messages or broke any of the dates that Florentino Ariza arranged so that they would seem to be casual encounters. He was a different person: the lover who never showed his face, the man most avid for love as well as most niggardly with it, the man who gave nothing and wanted everything, the man who did not allow anyone to leave a trace of her passing in his heart, the hunter lying in ambush — this man went out on the street in the midst of ecstatic signed letters, gallant gifts, imprudent vigils at the pigeonkeeper’s house, even on two occasions when her husband was not on a trip or at the market. It was the only time, since his youngest days, when he felt himself run through by the lance of love.
但事情并没有那么容易。纠缠了三个月后，美丽的养鸽女仍旧还是那个回答：“我不是那种女人。”可她从没有拒收弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的来信，也会去赴那些他安排好的貌似偶然的约会。他与以往判若两人：这个从不露面的情人，这个对爱情如饥似渴却又极其悭吝的人，这个从不付出、又想得到一切的人，这个不允许任何人在他心里留下足迹的人，这个藏头露尾的猎人，竟然跑到大街上，狂热地送出了一封封署名的情书，一件件殷勤的礼物，毫不谨慎地一趟趟跑到养鸽女家里去，甚至有两次是在她丈夫既没有出远门、也没有去市场的时候。从最初猎艳以来，这是他唯一一次感到自己被爱情之箭射穿了。
Florentino did no t find out until many days later, when the fugitive husband was captured and told the newspapers the reasons for the crime and how he had committed it. For many years he thought with terror about the signed letters, he kept track of the prison term of the murderer, who knew him because of his dealings with the boat company, but it was not so much fear of a knife at his throat or a public scandal as the misfortune of Fermina Daza’s learning about his infidelity. One day during his years of waiting, the woman who took care of Tránsito Ariza had to stay at the market longer than expected because of an unseasonable downpour, and when she returned to the house she found her sitting in the rocking chair, painted and bedecked as always, and with eyes so animated and a smile so mischievous that her caretaker did not realize she was dead until two hours later. Shortly before her death she had distributed to the neighborhood children the fortune in gold and jewels hidden in the jars buried under her bed, saying they could eat them like candy, and some of the most valuable were impossible to recover. Florentino Ariza buried her in the former Hand of God ranch, which was still known as the Cholera Cemetery, and he planted a rosebush on her grave.
很多天以后，在逃的丈夫被捕，向报界讲述了他犯罪的缘由和方式，直到这时，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨才知道养鸽女被害的事。很多年里，想起那些署了名的信，他都提心吊胆，并且默默地计算着罪犯的刑期。由于船上的生意，那人对他可以说是了如指掌，但他并不怎么怕他给自己的脖子来上一刀，也不怕传出丑闻，而是怕运气不好，让费尔明娜·达萨知道他的不忠。就在等待的那几年里，一天，照料特兰西多·阿里萨的那个女人由于一场不合季节的大雨，不得不在市场上耽搁得久了些，回来时，发现特兰西多·阿里萨已经死了。她坐在摇椅上，像往常一样把脸涂得花里胡哨，打扮得花枝招展，眼睛睁得大大的，脸上还挂着坏笑，以至于这位保姆两小时以后才发现她死了。不久前，她把埋在床下的那几个财宝罐里的黄金和宝石分给了街坊四邻的小孩，告诉他们可以当糖果吃，其中几件最值钱的如今已经怎么也找不回来了。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨把她葬在了古老的“上帝之手”庄园，也就是当时的“霍乱墓地”，还在她坟前种下了一丛玫瑰。
The death of his mother left Florentino Ariza condemned once again to his maniacal pursuits: the office, his meetings in strict rotation with his regular mistresses, the domino games at the Commercial Club, the same books of love, the Sunday visits to the cemetery. It was the rust of routine, which he had despised and feared so much, but which had protected him from an awareness of his age. However, one Sunday in December, when the rosebushes on the tombs had already defeated the garden shears, he saw the swallows on the recently installed electric wires and he suddenly realized how much time had gone by since the death of his mother, and how much since the murder of Olimpia Zuleta, and how very much since that other distant December afternoon when Fermina Daza sent him a letter saying yes, she would love him always. Until then he had behaved as if time would not pass for him but only for others. Just the week before, he happened to meet on the street one of the many couples who had married because of the letters he had written, and he did not recognize their oldest child, who was his godson. He smoothed over his embarrassment with the conventional exclamation: “I’ll be damned, he’s a man already!” And he continued in the same way even after his body began sending him the first warning signals, because he had always had the iron constitution of the sickly. Tránsito Ariza used to say: “The only disease my son ever had was cholera.” She had confused cholera with love, of course, long before her memory failed. But in any event she was mistaken, because her son had suffered from six blennorrhagias, although the doctor had said they were not six but the same one that reappeared after each lost battle. He had also had a swollen lymph gland, four warts, and six cases of impetigo in the groin, but it would not have occurred to him or any man to think of these as diseases; they were only the spoils of war.
母亲死后，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨再次陷入疯狂的困境：到办公室上班；按照严格顺序与各个长期情人轮流幽会；到商业俱乐部玩多米诺骨牌；继续阅读爱情小说；星期天到墓地去凭吊。生活规律得仿佛生了锈一般，既让人轻蔑，又让人害怕，但同时也是一种保护，让他意识不到时间的流逝。然而，十二月的一个星期日，当墓地的玫瑰丛已经战胜了修枝的大剪子，几只燕子停在为通电灯而刚刚架起的电线上时，他蓦然间发现，母亲去世后竟已过去了这么多年，距离奥林皮娅·苏莱塔被杀，则过去了更多年，而距离那个遥远的十二月下午，费尔明娜·达萨给他回信说“可以”，并说“会永远爱他”，更不知已经流逝了多少岁月。在这之前，他活得就仿佛时间从没有在自己身上流走，而只是在他人身上留下痕迹似的。就在刚刚过去的一周，他在街上碰见了因他写的情书而终成眷属的那许多对恋人中的一对，他甚至没有认出他们的大儿子，也就是自己的教子来。他用一句人们惯用的惊呼缓解了尴尬：“好家伙，都长成大人了！”尽管身体已向他发出最初的警告，但他依然故我，因为在容易生病的人堆儿中，他的身体就像是铁打的。特兰西多·阿里萨常说：“我儿子唯一得过的病就是霍乱。”在记忆混乱之前，她就已经把霍乱和相思病混为一谈了。但不管怎样她都错了，因为她的儿子暗地里得过六次淋病，尽管医生说那不是六次，而是一次，后来都只是因治疗不力又反复发作而已。此外，他还得过一次腹股沟淋巴腺炎、四次龟头疣病和六次股癖，但无论他还是其他任何一个男人，都绝不会把这些当作疾病，而只会把它们当成战利品。
After his first few visits to the cemetery, Florentino Ariza discovered that Olimpia Zuleta was buried very close by, without a tombstone but with her name and the date scrawled in the fresh cement of the crypt, and he thought in horror that this was one of her husband’s sanguinary jokes. When the roses bloomed he would place a flower on her grave if there was no one in sight, and later he planted a cutting taken from his mother’s rosebush. Both bloomed in such profusion that Florentino Ariza had to bring shears and other garden tools to keep them under control. But the task was beyond him: after a few years the two rosebushes had spread like weeds among the graves, and from then on, the unadorned cemetery of the plague was called the Cemetery of Roses, until some mayor who was less realistic than popular wisdom cleared out the roses one night and hung a republican sign from the arch of the entrance gate: Universal Cemetery.
头几次去墓地，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨就发现养鸽女奥林皮娅·苏莱塔葬在很近的地方，没有墓碑，但有人在坟上的水泥板未干之前，用手指刻下了死者的姓名和日期。他不禁毛骨悚然地想，那一定是她丈夫开的一个血淋淋的玩笑。玫瑰花开的时候，只要四周无人，他就摘下一枝放在她的墓前。后来，他干脆从母亲的玫瑰丛中挖出一株，种到她的坟前。两丛玫瑰发了疯似的越长越多，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨不得不带一把大剪子和其他园艺工具来修枝剪叶。但玫瑰的长势渐渐超越了他的能力范围：多年以后，两丛玫瑰已如杂草般在一座座坟墓间蔓延开来。从此，这座著名的霍乱墓地改叫“玫瑰墓地”，直到一位不具民间智慧之现实性的市长，一夜间铲除了所有的玫瑰丛，在墓地入口的拱门上挂起一块政府的牌子，上面写着：“普世公墓”。
When he had just turned forty, he had gone to the doctor because of vague pains in various parts of his body. After many tests, the doctor had said: “It’s age.” He had returned home without even wondering if any of that had anything to do with him. For his only point of reference in his own past was the ephemeral love affair with Fermina Daza, and only what concerned her had anything to do with reckoning his life. So that on the afternoon when he saw the swallows on the electric wires, he reviewed the past from his earliest memory, he reviewed his chance loves, the countless pitfalls he had been obliged to avoid in order to reach a position of authority, the events without number that had given rise to his bitter determination that Fermina Daza would be his and he would be hers despite everything, in the face of everything, and only then did he realize that his life was passing. He was shaken by a visceral shudder that left his mind blank, and he had to drop the garden tools and lean against the cemetery wall so that the first blow of old age would not knock him down.
刚满四十岁，他就不得不因全身上下莫名其妙的疼痛去看医生。做了很多次检查后，医生都只对他说：“年岁不饶人啊。”但他每次回家，甚至从没有想过这一切跟自己有什么关系。他的过去唯一的参照点就是与费尔明娜·达萨短暂的爱情，只有和她相关的事才能让他找到岁月的支点。所以，看见燕子停在电线上的那个下午，他从最久远的记忆开始回顾自己的过往，回顾了一桩桩猎艳的情事，回顾了为爬上发号施令的位置曾跃过的无数处暗礁，以及种种数都数不清的往事，而这一切皆由他那刻骨的决心而起：他誓要让费尔明娜·达萨属于他，而他也属于她，这个决心高于一切，所向披靡。可直到这一刻，他才发现自己的一生几乎都已经过去了。五脏六腑的一阵寒战传遍他的全身，他眼前一黑，不由得松掉了手中的园艺工具，靠在墓地的围墙上，这才没有因衰老的第一次打击而倒下。
And it had. Thirty years that had also gone by for Fermina Daza, of course, but had been for her the most pleasant and exhilarating years of her life. The days of horror in the Palace of Casalduero were relegated to the trash heap of memory. She was living in her new house in La Manga, absolute mistress of her own destiny, with a husband she would have preferred to all the men in the world if she had to choose again, a son who was continuing the family tradition in the Medical School, and a daughter so much like her when she was her age that at times she was disturbed by the impression of feeling herself duplicated. She had returned to Europe three times after the unfortunate trip from which she had intended never to return so that she would not have to live in perpetual turmoil.
的确如此。当然，对费尔明娜·达萨来说，同样也过了三十年，但那是她一生中最快乐也最舒心的三十年。卡萨尔杜埃罗侯爵府的那些可怕日子已被扔进了记忆的垃圾堆。她住在拉曼加的新房子里，成了自己命运的绝对主人，同丈夫和一双儿女生活在一起。如果再让她选一次，她还是会从世间所有的男人中选中她的丈夫。儿子在医学院里延续着家族传统，女儿则长得和她年轻时一模一样，有时连她都糊涂了，好像自己重生了似的。在那次誓不回来在无尽的惊恐中度日的倒霉旅行之后，她又去过欧洲三次。
“Damn it,” he said, appalled, “that all happened thirty years ago!”
“见鬼，”他惊恐地自言自语道，“都已经三十年了！”
God must have finally listened to someone’s prayers: after two years in Paris, when Fermina Daza and Juvenal Urbino were just beginning to find what remained of their love in the ruins, a midnight telegram awoke them with the news that Doña Blanca de Urbino was gravely ill, and almost on its heels came another with the news of her death. They returned without delay. Fermina Daza walked off the ship wearing a black tunic whose fullness could not hide her condition. In fact she was pregnant again, and this news gave rise to a popular song, more mischievous than malicious, whose chorus was heard for the rest of the year: What d’you think she does over there, this beauty from our earth? Whenever she comes back from Paris, she’s ready to give birth. Despite the vulgarity of the words, for many years afterward Dr. Juvenal Urbino would request it at Social Club dances to prove he was a good sport.
上帝一定是听到了某人的祈祷——就在费尔明娜·达萨和胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺在巴黎逗留了两年，刚刚开始从废墟中寻找爱情的碎屑时，一封半夜到达的电报惊醒了他们：布兰卡·乌尔比诺夫人病重。另一封传达死讯的电报接踵而至。他们即刻赶了回来。费尔明娜·达萨身着一袭丧服下了船，宽大的衣服已不足以掩饰她的身形。没错，她又怀孕了。这个消息造就了一首民间歌谣的诞生，歌词并无恶意，只是有些打趣，其中的叠句在当年颇为流行：美人在巴黎究竟有何秘密，每每回来都喜得贵子。虽然歌词鄙陋，但直到很多年后，在社交俱乐部的节日庆典中，胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺都会点这首曲子，以示自己的风趣大度。
The noble palace of the Marquis de Casalduero, whose existence and coat of arms had never been documented, was sold to the municipal treasury for a decent price, and then resold for a fortune to the central government when a Dutch researcher began excavations to prove that the real grave of Christopher Columbus was located there: the fifth one so far. The sisters of Dr. Urbino, without taking vows, went to live in seclusion in the Convent of the Salesians, and Fermina Daza stayed in her father’s old house until the villa in La Manga was completed. She walked in with a firm step, she walked in prepared to command, with the English furniture brought back on their honeymoon and the complementary furnishings they sent for after their reconciliation trip, and from the first day she began to fill it with exotic animals that she herself went to buy on the schooners from the Antilles. She walked in with the husband she had won back, the son she had raised with propriety, the daughter who was born four months after their return and whom they baptized Ofelia. Dr. Urbino, for his part, understood that it was impossible to possess his wife as completely as he had on their honeymoon, because the part of love he wanted was what she had given, along with her best hours, to her children, but he learned to live and be happy with what was left over. The harmony they had longed for reached its culmination when they least expected it, at a gala dinner at which a delicious food was served that Fermina Daza could not identify. She began with a good portion, but she liked it so much that she took another of the same size, and she was lamenting the fact that urbane etiquette did not permit her to help herself to a third, when she learned that she had just eaten, with unsuspected pleasure, two heaping plates of pureed eggplant. She accepted defeat with good grace, and from that time on, eggplant in all its forms was served at the villa in La Manga with almost as much frequency as at the Palace of Casalduero, and it was enjoyed so much by everyone that Dr. Juvenal Urbino would lighten the idle hours of his old age by insisting that he wanted to have another daughter so that he could give her the best-loved word in the house as a name: Eggplant Urbino.
关于远近闻名的卡萨尔杜埃罗侯爵府及其家族徽章，向来没有准确的记载。府邸先是以一个合适的价格卖给了市财政厅，而后一位荷兰学者在那里进行了挖掘工作，试图证明那里是哥伦布真正的坟墓——已是迄今发现的第五座了——所在，于是，它又以巨额价格卖给了中央政府。乌尔比诺医生的妹妹们住进了萨勒斯修道院，没有发愿，却过着隐居生活。费尔明娜·达萨一直住在父亲的老房子里，直到拉曼加的别墅修建完毕。她步伐坚定地踏入新宅，一搬进去就开始当家做主。她带去了新婚旅行时带回来的英国家具，以及这次和好之旅后又叫人运来的补充物件。从第一天起，她就在屋子里塞满了自己亲自到安的列斯帆船上买回来的各种珍禽异兽。她挽着重修旧好的丈夫，带着茁壮成长的儿子和回来四个月后降生、取名为奥菲利娅的女儿，搬进了新居。乌尔比诺医生心里明白，自己已无法找回新婚旅行时那个完整的妻子了，因为他希望得到的那部分爱已被她连同她的大好青春一起给了儿女们。但他学会了享受爱的残羹，并从中得到幸福。朝思暮想的琴瑟和谐在最意想不到的时候实现了。一次晚宴中，侍者端上了一道费尔明娜·达萨认不出是何物的美味佳肴。她吃完了一大份，喜欢之极，又要了同样的一份，正当她感到遗憾，碍于惺惺作态的文明礼仪不便再要第三份时，竟得知自己刚刚怀着毫无顾虑的喜悦吃下去的满满两大盘美食全都是茄泥。她雍容大度地认了输：从那时起，在拉曼加别墅，三天两头就端上各式各样做法的茄子，频繁程度堪比曾经的卡萨尔杜埃罗侯爵府，而且每个人都脾胃大开。以至于胡维纳尔·乌尔比诺医生在老年的闲暇时光常常津津乐道，说他真希望自己再生一个女儿，为的就是给她取一个定会让全家都开心的名字：茄子·乌尔比诺。
Fermina Daza knew then that private life, unlike public life, was fickle and unpredictable. It was not easy for her to establish real differences between children and adults, but in the last analysis she preferred children, because their judgment was more reliable. She had barely turned the corner into maturity, free at last of illusions, when she began to detect the disillusionment of never having been what she had dreamed of being when she was young, in the Park of the Evangels. Instead, she was something she never dared admit even to herself: a deluxe servant. In society she came to be the woman most loved, most catered to, and by the same token most feared, but in nothing was she more demanding or less forgiving than in the management of her house. She always felt as if her life had been lent to her by her husband: she was absolute monarch of a vast empire of happiness, which had been built by him and for him alone. She knew that he loved her above all else, more than anyone else in the world, but only for his own sake: she was in his holy service.
到那时，费尔明娜·达萨才明白，私生活跟社会生活恰恰相反，是变化无常、不可预见的。要找出孩子和成年人之间的真正差别，对她来说殊非易事。但再三分析后，她还是更喜欢孩子，因为孩子的想法更加真实。她的人生才刚迈入成熟，刚刚摒弃了形形色色的海市蜃楼，便又隐隐伤感起来，因为她始终没有成为自己年轻时住在福音花园里所憧憬的样子，而是成了这副甚至自己都一直不敢承认的模样：一个华贵雍容的女仆。在社交圈里，她最终成了最受爱戴，最心满意足，但也因此最为胆怯的女人。然而，没有什么让她比在治家方面对自己的要求更为严格，也没有什么比这方面更让她对自己的疏忽无法原谅。她一直觉得她的生活是从丈夫那里租借来的：她是这个辽阔的幸福帝国至高无上的君主，但这个帝国是丈夫建造的，且仅为他自己而建。她丈夫爱她胜过一切，胜过世间所有的人，但这也仅仅是为了他自己：这是他的神圣义务。
If anything vexed her, it was the perpetual chain of daily meals. For they not only had to be served on time: they had to be perfect, and they had to be just what he wanted to eat, without his having to be asked. If she ever did ask, in one of the innumerable useless ceremonies of their domestic ritual, he would not even look up from the newspaper and would reply: “Anything.” In his amiable way he was telling the truth, because one could not imagine a less despotic husband. But when it was time to eat, it could not be anything, but just what he wanted, and with no defects: the meat should not taste of meat, and the fish should not taste of fish, and the pork should not taste of mange, and the chicken should not taste of feathers. Even when it was not the season for asparagus, it had to be found regardless of cost, so that he could take pleasure in the vapors of his own fragrant urine. She did not blame him: she blamed life. But he was an implacable protagonist in that life. At the mere hint of a doubt, he would push aside his plate and say: “This meal has been prepared without love.” In that sphere he would achieve moments of fantastic inspiration. Once he tasted some chamomile tea and sent it back, saying only: “This stuff tastes of window.” Both she and the servants were surprised because they had never heard of anyone who had drunk boiled window, but when they tried the tea in an effort to understand, they understood: it did taste of window.
如果说有什么东西在折磨着她，那就是一日三餐的永久刑罚。因为它们不仅仅必须按时，而且必须完美无瑕，必须符合他的喜好，但同时却又不能去问他。而如果她真的问了——依照着那无数条仪式性的家庭礼节中的一条——他就会看着报纸，连眼皮也不抬地回答说：“随便什么都行。”他说的是真心话，而且和颜悦色，自认为没有哪个丈夫比他更好商量了。可到了吃饭的时候，“随便什么”就不行了，必须符合他的喜好，不能有半点瑕疵：肉不能有肉味儿，鱼不能有鱼味儿，猪肉不能吃出疥疮似的腥味，鸡肉不能吃出鸡毛的味道。即便不是吃芦笋的季节，也得不惜代价地为他找来，为的是让他能在自己尿液的芬芳气息中怡然自得。她不怨他，只怨生活。但他是生活中难以安抚的主角。只要稍有怀疑，他就会把桌上的盘子一推，说：“这顿饭没有用爱来做。”在这方面，他的灵感真是鬼使神差。有一次，他刚尝了一口甘菊茶，便把它推到远处，只说了一句：“这玩意儿有股窗户味儿。”她和女仆们都大吃一惊，因为谁也没听说过有人喝过水煮窗户，她们尝了尝那壶茶，想弄明白是怎么回事，结果，还真有股窗户味儿。
Tired of his lack of understanding, she asked him for an unusual birthday gift: that for one day he would take care of the domestic chores. He accepted in amusement, and indeed took charge of the house at dawn. He served a splendid breakfast, but he forgot that fried eggs did not agree with her and that she did not drink café con leche. Then he ordered a birthday luncheon for eight guests and gave instructions for tidying the house, and he tried so hard to manage better than she did that before noon he had to capitulate without a trace of embarrassment. From the first moment he realized he did not have the slightest idea where anything was, above all in the kitchen, and the servants let him upset everything to find each item, for they were playing the game too. At ten o’clock no decisions had been made regarding lunch because the housecleaning was not finished yet, the bedroom was not straightened, the bathroom was not scrubbed; he forgot to replace the toilet paper, change the sheets, and send the coachmen for the children, and he confused the servants” duties: he told the cook to make the beds and set the chambermaids to cooking. At eleven o’clock, when the guests were about to arrive, the chaos in the house was such that Fermina Daza resumed command, laughing out loud, not with the triumphant attitude she would have liked but shaken instead with compassion for the domestic helplessness of her husband. He was bitter as he offered the argument he always used: “Things did not go as badly for me as they would for you if you tried to cure the sick.” But it was a useful lesson, and not for him alone. Over the years they both reached the same wise conclusion by different paths: it was not possible to live together in any other way, or love in any other way, and nothing in this world was more difficult than love.
他的不通情理让她十足厌烦，于是在生日那天，她向他要了一件不同寻常的礼物：由他掌管一天家务。他欣然接受了，而且果真从天一亮便开始掌权。他张罗了一顿丰盛的早餐，却忘了她不喜欢吃煎鸡蛋，也不喝加了牛奶的咖啡。接着，他下令开始准备招待八位客人的生日午宴，并吩咐收拾屋子。他努力想比她操持得更好，但不到中午就不得不投降了，脸上没有丝毫愧色。从一开始，他就发现自己对什么东西放在哪儿一无所知，尤其是厨房里的东西。而女仆们也从中取乐，任由他每次为了找一样东西把所有都翻遍。十点钟时，还没决定午餐吃什么，因为家里的卫生还没有搞完，甚至连卧室都没有收拾完，卫生间没刷，卫生纸忘了放，床单忘了换，还忘了派司机去接孩子。他把女仆们的职责全搞混了：命令厨娘去整理床铺，让收拾床铺的女佣去做饭。十一点，客人马上就要到了，家里还是一团糟。费尔明娜·达萨重新担起了指挥的职责。她笑得要死，但并不像之前期望的那样感觉到胜利的得意，而是为丈夫在管理家务方面一无是处感到同情，这让她自己也很震惊。他为自己所受的重创叹了口气，找了个常用的理由来辩解：“至少，我管家不会比你给人治病差。”不过，这次的教训是有益的，而且不仅仅对他而言。随着时间的推移，两人殊途同归地得出了明智的结论，那就是：换一种方式，他们无法共同生活下去，换一种方式，他们也无法继续相爱——世上没有比爱更艰难的事了。
He was a perfect husband: he never picked up anything from the floor, or turned out a light, or closed a door. In the morning darkness, when he found a button missing from his clothes, she would hear him say: “A man should have two wives: one to love and one to sew on his buttons.” Every day, at his first swallow of coffee and at his first spoonful of soup, he would break into a heartrending howl that no longer frightened anyone, and then unburden himself: “The day I leave this house, you will know it is because I grew tired of always having a burned mouth.” He would say that they never prepared lunches as appetizing and unusual as on the days when he could not eat because he had taken a laxative, and he was so convinced that this was treachery on the part of his wife that in the end he refused to take a purgative unless she took one with him.
他是个完美丈夫：从不会捡起地上的任何东西，也从不关灯，不关门。黑暗的清晨，如果他发现衣服上缺了一颗扣子，她便会听见他说：“男人需要两个妻子，一个用来爱，另一个用来钉扣子。”每天，当他喝第一口咖啡，喝第一勺冒着热气的汤时，都要发出一声撕心裂肺的号叫，大家对此已经不感到害怕了，接着他会长叹一声：“等我有一天离开了这个家，你们要明白，那是因为这种烫嘴的日子我过够了。”他说，只有在他服用泻药而不能吃饭的日子里，她们才把饭菜做得格外香，格外出色。他坚信这是妻子对他的背叛，以至于最后只要妻子不肯跟他一同吃泻药，他就坚决不吃。
In the fullness of her new life, Fermina Daza would see Florentino Ariza on various public occasions, with more frequency as he improved his position, but she learned to see him with so much naturalness that more than once, in sheer distraction, she forgot to greet him. She heard about him often, because in the world of business his cautious but inexorable advance in the R. C. C. was a constant topic of conversation. She saw him improve his manners, his timidity was passed off as a certain enigmatic distance, a slight increase in weight suited him, as did the slowness of age, and he had known how to handle his absolute baldness with dignity. The only area in which he persisted in defying time and fashion was in his somber attire, his anachronistic frock coats, his unique hat, the poet’s string ties from his mother’s notions shop, his sinister umbrella. Fermina Daza grew accustomed to seeing him with other eyes, and in the end she did not connect him to the languid adolescent who would sit and sigh for her under the gusts of yellow leaves in the Park of the Evangels. In any case, she never saw him with indifference, and she was always pleased by the good news she heard about him, because that helped to alleviate her guilt.
在新生活的全盛时期，费尔明娜·达萨在不同的公众场合见过弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨，而且见得越是频繁，他的职位就升得越高。但她已经学会了看见他时表现得自自然然，以至于不止一次因为心不在焉而忘了和他打招呼。她经常听见别人谈论他，因为他在CFC公司步步为营而又势不可挡地扶摇直上，这已成了商界一个经常性的话题。她看到他改善了自己的言行和仪态，他的胆怯被过滤成了一种神秘的清高，微微发福的身材很适合他，岁月只留下了缓慢的痕迹对他很有利，而他也懂得如何体面地去打理他那惨不忍睹的谢顶。唯一挑战时代和潮流的是他阴郁的穿着：过时的礼服外套，始终不变的一顶帽子，母亲杂货铺里卖给诗人的那种窄条领带，还有那把阴沉的雨伞。费尔明娜·达萨逐渐习惯了以另一种方式去看他，终于不再把他同那个坐在福音花园、在卷着黄色落叶的大风中为她哀叹的忧郁年轻人联系在一起了。但不管怎样，她看见他时从来不是无动于衷的，听到有关他的好消息时，她总是很高兴，因为这样可以慢慢减轻她的罪责。
However, when she thought he was completely erased from her memory, he reappeared where she least expected him, a phantom of her nostalgia. It was during the first glimmering of old age, when she began to feel that something irreparable had occurred in her life whenever she heard thunder before the rain. It was the incurable wound of solitary, stony, punctual thunder that would sound every afternoon in October at three o’clock in the Sierra Villanueva, a memory that was becoming more vivid as the years went by. While more recent events blurred in just a few days, the memories of her legendary journey through Cous in Hildebranda’s province were as sharp as if they had happened yesterday, and they had the perverse clarity of nostalgia. She remembered Manaure, in the mountains, its one straight, green street, its birds of good omen, the haunted house where she would wake to find her nightgown soaked by the endless tears of Petra Morales, who had died of love many years before in the same bed where she lay sleeping. She remembered the taste of the guavas, which had never been the same again, the warning thunder, which had been so intense that its sound was confused with the sound of rain, the topaz afternoons in San Juan del César when she would go walking with her court of excited cousins and clench her teeth so that her heart would not leap out of her mouth as they approached the telegraph office. She had to sell her father’s house because she could not bear the pain of her adolescence, the view of the desolate little park from the balcony, the sibylline fragrance of gardenias on hot nights, the frightening face of an old lady on the February afternoon when her fate was decided, and regardless of where she turned her memory of those times, she would find herself face to face with Florentino Ariza. But she always had enough serenity to know that they were not memories of love or repentance, but the image of a sorrow that left a trail of tears on her cheeks. Without realizing it, she was menaced by the same trap of pity that had been the downfall of so many of Florentino Ariza’s defenseless victims.
然而，就在她以为已把他从记忆中彻底抹掉的时候，他又在最意想不到的地方出现了，成为她怀旧思绪中的一个幽灵。那是衰老刚刚显露征兆的时期，每当听到下雨前的雷声，她就觉得生活中发生了什么不可弥补的事。那孤独的、石头般冷酷、准时准点的雷声给她造成了无法愈合的创伤。十月里的每天下午三点，雷声在维利亚奴埃瓦山上响起，往日的记忆随着岁月流逝越来越历历在目。新的记忆几天后就会在脑海中模糊，而在伊尔德布兰达家乡省份的那次传奇之旅却越来越清晰，一切宛如昨日，怀旧之情将记忆渲染得清晰得邪门。她还记得那个坐落在山上的名叫马纳乌雷的小城，记得城中唯一的那条笔直而翠绿的街道，记得那些象征吉祥的鸟儿，还有那座可怕的房子，在那里，她每天都穿着被佩特拉·莫拉雷斯的泪水浸湿了的睡衣醒来，多年以前，这个女人正是在她睡的那张床上为爱殉情。她还记得当时那番石榴的味道，如今再也找不回来；她记得那预示着山雨欲来的紧密雷声，最后和嘈杂的雨声混合在一起；她还记得在圣胡安·德尔塞萨尔的那一个个如黄玉般金光闪耀的下午，她和那一群兴高采烈吵吵闹闹的表姐妹出去散步，走近电报局时，她咬紧牙，生怕自己的心从嘴里跳出来。她最终还是卖掉了父亲的房子，因为她无法忍受少年时代的回忆所带来的痛苦，无法忍受站在阳台上看见那凄凉的小花园，无法忍受炎热的夜晚栀子花散发出的神秘芳香，也无法忍受回忆起那个决定她命运的二月下午，那张古老贵妇的照片所带给她的恐惧。无论她把那时的记忆转向哪里，都会迎头碰上弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨。可她始终还是保持了足够的冷静，分辨出那并非对爱的回忆，也不是对后悔的回忆，而是对一个曾使她泪水链链的痛苦形象的回忆。她没有发觉，她正被同情的陷阱威胁，而正是这同样的陷阱，让那么多毫无准备的受害者在弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨那里失去了贞洁。
She clung to her husband. And it was just at the time when he needed her most, because he suffered the disadvantage of being ten years ahead of her as he stumbled alone through the mists of old age, with the even greater disadvantage of being a man and weaker than she was. In the end they knew each other so well that by the time they had been married for thirty years they were like a single divided being, and they felt uncomfortable at the frequency with which they guessed each other’s thoughts without intending to, or the ridiculous accident of one of them anticipating in public what the other was going to say. Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was the time when they loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other mortal trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore.
她倚仗着她的丈夫。而此时也正是丈夫最需要她的时候。他不幸比她年长十岁，正独自跌跌撞撞地走在暮年的大雾之中，而更不幸的是，他是个男人，比她更为脆弱。他们终于彻底了解了对方，在结婚将近三十年时，他们变得好似一个人被分成了两半，常常因为对方猜出自己没有说出口的心事，或者一个抢先把另一个想说的话公之于众的荒唐事件而感到不悦。他们一起克服日常生活的误解，顷刻结下的怨恨，相互间的无理取闹，以及夫唱妇随的那种神话般的荣耀之光。那是他们相爱得最美好的时期，不慌不忙，适宜得体，对于共同战胜逆境所取得的不可思议的胜利，他们比任何时候都更了然于心，也更心存感激。当然，生活还将给他们更多致命的考验，但那已经无关紧要了：他们已到达了彼岸。
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