Don Pius V Loayza died when his son was ten years old. Although he always took care of his expenses in secret, he never recognized him as his son before the law, nor did he leave him with his future secure, so that Florentino Ariza used only his mother’s name even though his true parentage was always common knowledge. Florentino Ariza had to leave school after his father’s death, and he went to work as an apprentice in the Postal Agency, where he was in charge of opening sacks, sorting the letters, and notifying the public that mail had arrived by flying the flag of its country of origin over the office door.
皮奥第五·罗阿依萨先生去世的时候，这个儿子只有十岁。虽然他一直暗中承担着儿子的抚养费用，但从未在法律上承认过他，也没有为他的前途做好安排。因此，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨只用了母亲的姓氏，尽管他真正的出身人人皆知。父亲死后，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨不得不辍学到邮电局当了学徒。在那里，他被安排给邮袋拆封，分发信件，并负责在邮件到达时通知大伙儿，哪个国家的邮件到了，他就要在邮局门口升起哪个国家的国旗。
Florentino Ariza, on the other hand, had not stopped thinking of her for a single moment since Fermina Daza had rejected him out of hand after a long and troubled love affair fifty-one years, nine months, and four days ago. He did not have to keep a running tally, drawing a line for each day on the walls of a cell, because not a day had passed that something did not happen to remind him of her. At the time of their separation he lived with his mother, Tránsito Ariza, in one half of a rented house on the Street of Windows, where she had kept a notions shop ever since she was a young woman, and where she also unraveled shirts and old rags to sell as bandages for the men wounded in the war. He was her only child, born of an occasional alliance with the well-known shipowner Don Pius V Loayza, one of the three brothers who had founded the River Company of the Caribbean and thereby given new impetus to steam navigation along the Magdalena River.
至于弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨，自从当初费尔明娜·达萨在两人那段长久而受阻的爱情之后不留余地地拒绝了他，便没有一刻不在思念她。从那时起，已经过去了五十一年九个月零四天。无需每天在地下室的墙上划条线备忘，因为没有哪一天不发生点什么让他想起她来。决裂那年，他二十二岁，和母亲特兰西多·阿里萨住在窗户街一座租来的普通房子里。母亲从年轻时起就在那儿开了一家杂货铺，还拆些旧衬衫和破布，卖给战争中的伤员当药棉用。他是独生子，是母亲和那位鼎鼎有名的船主皮奥第五[1]·罗阿依萨先生一次偶然结合的产物。后者兄弟三人曾共同创建了加勒比河运公司，为马格达莱纳河上的蒸汽机船航行事业注入了新的活力。（注：[1] 教皇“庇护五世”在西班牙语中的叫法。）
His good sense attracted the attention of the telegraph operator, the German émigré Lotario Thugut, who also played the organ for important ceremonies in the Cathedral and gave music lessons in the home. Lotario Thugut taught him the Morse code and the workings of the telegraph system, and after only a few lessons on the violin Florentino Ariza could play by ear like a professional. When he met Fermina Daza he was the most sought-after young man in his social circle, the one who knew how to dance the latest dances and recite sentimental poetry by heart, and who was always willing to play violin serenades to his friends” sweethearts. He was very thin, with Indian hair plastered down with scented pomade and eyeglasses for myopia, which added to his forlorn appearance. Aside from his defective vision, he suffered from chronic constipation, which forced him to take enemas throughout his life. He had one black suit, inherited from his dead father, but Tránsito Ariza took such good care of it that every Sunday it looked new. Despite his air of weakness, his reserve, and his somber clothes, the girls in his circle held secret lotteries to determine who would spend time with him, and he gambled on spending time with them until the day he met Fermina Daza and his innocence came to an end.
他的聪明伶俐引起了电报员洛达里奥·图古特的注意。洛达里奥是个德国移民，除了这份报务工作，还在大教堂的重要仪式上弹管风琴，并兼做音乐家教。他教弗洛伦蒂诺摩尔斯电码，教他发电报，还教他拉小提琴。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨只上了几堂课，就能像一个职业小提琴手那样，耳听乐曲，跟着旋律拉琴了。他在十八岁认识费尔明娜·达萨时，是他那个圈子中最讨人喜欢的小伙子，最会跳时髦的舞曲，还会朗诵伤感的诗歌，而且随叫随到，用小提琴为朋友的女友献上一曲小夜曲独奏。从那时起，他就一直骨瘦如柴，印度人似的头发上打着飘香的发蜡，一副近视眼镜更让他显得楚楚可怜。除了视力上的缺陷，他还患有长期便秘，这迫使他一辈子都依靠灌肠剂。他只有一套像样的礼服，是父亲的遗物，但特兰西多·阿里萨把它打理得很好，弗洛伦蒂诺每个星期日穿起来都像新的一样。尽管他身材瘦削，性格内向，衣衫简陋，他那个圈子里的姑娘们却都靠私下里抽签来决定谁做他的女伴，而他也一直这样与她们厮混。直到有一天，他遇见了费尔明娜·达萨，天真的日子就此结束。
He had seen her for the first time one afternoon when Lotario Thugut told him to deliver a telegram to someone named Lorenzo Daza, with no known place of residence. He found him in one of the oldest houses on the Park of the Evangels; it was half in ruins, and its interior patio, with weeds in the flowerpots and a stone fountain with no water, resembled an abbey cloister. Florentino Ariza heard no human sound as he followed the barefoot maid under the arches of the passageway, where unopened moving cartons and bricklayer’s tools lay among leftover lime and stacks of cement bags, for the house was undergoing drastic renovation. At the far end of the patio was a temporary office where a very fat man, whose curly sideburns grew into his mustache, sat behind a desk, taking his siesta. In fact his name was Lorenzo Daza, and he was not very well known in the city because he had arrived less than two years before and was not a man with many friends.
他第一次见到她是在一个下午。洛达里奥·图古特让他去给一个叫洛伦索·达萨的人送一封电报，电报上未写明住址。他最终在福音花园找到了这位洛伦索·达萨。他家是福音花园中最古老的房子，旧得几乎要倒塌下来，里面的院子也像个修道院的内院。花坛里杂草丛生，石砌的喷泉池里一滴水也没有。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨跟着赤脚的女佣走在走廊的拱顶下，没有听见一点儿人声。走廊上堆着尚未打开的搬家箱子，泥瓦匠的工具扔在用剩的石灰和一包包堆起的水泥中间，因为当时那所房子正在进行一次彻底修缮。院子尽头有一间临时办公室，一个男人正坐在写字台前午睡。男人很胖，鬈曲的络腮胡和嘴上方的胡子连在一起。他的名字正是洛伦索·达萨。这个人在城中并不出名，因为他不到两年前才来到这里，而且不喜欢交际。
He received the telegram as if it were the continuation of an ominous dream. Florentino Ariza observed his livid eyes with a kind of official compassion, he observed his uncertain fingers trying to break the seal, the heartfelt fear that he had seen so many times in so many addressees who still could not think about telegrams without connecting them with death. After reading it he regained his composure. He sighed: “Good news.” And he handed Florentino Ariza the obligatory five reales, letting him know with a relieved smile that he would not have given them to him if the news had been bad. Then he said goodbye with a handshake, which was not the usual thing to do with a telegraph messenger, and the maid accompanied him to the street door, more to keep an eye on him than to lead the way. They retraced their steps along the arcaded passageway, but this time Florentino Ariza knew that there was someone else in the house, because the brightness in the patio was filled with the voice of a woman repeating a reading lesson. As he passed the sewing room, he saw through the window an older woman and a young girl sitting very close together on two chairs and following the reading in the book that the woman held open on her lap. It seemed a strange sight: the daughter teaching the mother to read. His interpretation was incorrect only in part, because the woman was the aunt, not the mother of the child, although she had raised her as if she were her own. The lesson was not interrupted, but the girl raised her eyes to see who was passing by the window, and that casual glance was the beginning of a cataclysm of love that still had not ended half a century later.
他收下电报时的样子就仿佛仍处在一场噩梦当中。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨带着礼貌的同情看着他那双青紫色的眼睛，看着那颤抖的手指费劲地撕开封口处的邮票。这种内心的恐惧弗洛伦蒂诺在很多收信人身上都看到过，他们始终无法不将电报同死亡的消息联系到一起。但读罢电报，他恢复了情绪，长吁一口气说：“好消息。”他递给弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨实打实的五个里亚尔，并用一个轻松的微笑让他明白，若是坏消息，自己绝不会如此慷慨。接着，他和弗洛伦蒂诺握手道别，这可不是通常和电报邮递员告别的方式。女佣把他送至临街的大门口，但与其说是为给他领路，不如说是为了监视他。他们原路返回，又走过那个带拱顶的走廊。但这一次，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨发现房子里还有其他人，因为敞亮的院子中回响着一个女人的声音，正在反复朗读一篇课文。从缝纫室前经过时，弗洛伦蒂诺透过窗子看见一个上了年纪的妇人和一个少女。两人坐在两把紧挨的椅子上，一起读着一本摊开在妇人裙兜上的书。这一幕看上去颇为奇特：竟然是女儿在教妈妈读书。但弗洛伦蒂诺其实只猜对了一半，这位妇人是女孩的姑妈，并非母亲，虽然一直以来，她就像母亲一样抚养着她。朗读没有中断，但女孩抬眼看了看是谁走过窗前。正是这偶然的一瞥，成为这场半世纪后仍未结束的惊天动地的爱情的源头。
All that Florentino Ariza could learn about Lorenzo Daza was that he had come from San Juan de la Ciénaga with his only daughter and his unmarried sister soon after the cholera epidemic, and those who saw him disembark had no doubt that he had come to stay since he brought everything necessary for a well-furnished house. His wife had died when the girl was very young. His sister, named Escolástic a, was forty years old, and she was fulfilling a vow to wear the habit of St. Francis when she went out on the street and the penitent’s rope around her waist when she was at home. The girl was thirteen years old and had the same name as her dead mother: Fermina.
关于洛伦索·达萨，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨唯一打听到的就是在霍乱后不久，他带着自己的独生女儿和独身妹妹，从圣胡安·德拉希耶纳加来到这里。当初看见他们下船的人毫不怀疑他们是来此定居的，因为这家人把一个配备齐全的家所需要的一切都带来了。女儿还很小时，他的妻子就去世了。妹妹名叫埃斯科拉斯蒂卡，四十岁，因为正在还愿，上街时总是身穿圣方济各会的修士服，回家后则只在腰间系上修士服的腰带。女孩十三岁，和已故的母亲同名，叫费尔明娜。
It was supposed that Lorenzo Daza was a man of means, because he lived well with no known employment and had paid hard cash for the Park of the Evangels house, whose restoration must have cost him at least twice the purchase price of two hundred gold pesos. His daughter was studying at the Academy of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin, where for two centuries young ladies of society had learned the art and technique of being diligent and submissive wives. During the colonial period and the early years of the Republic, the school had accepted only those students with great family names. But the old families, ruined by Independence, had to submit to the realities of a new time, and the Academy opened its doors to all applicants who could pay the tuition, regardless of the color of their blood, on the essential condition that they were legitimate daughters of Catholic marriages. In any event, it was an expensive school, and the fact that Fermina Daza studied there was sufficient indication of her family’s economic situation, if not of its social position. This news encouraged Florentino Ariza, since it indicated to him that the beautiful adolescent with the almond-shaped eyes was within reach of his dreams. But her father’s strict regime soon provided an irremediable difficulty. Unlike the other students, who walked to school in groups or accompanied by an older servant, Fermina Daza always walked with her spinster aunt, and her behavior indicated that she was permitted no distraction.
大家推测洛伦索·达萨是个有钱人，因为没人知道他有什么职业，但他生活却很富足。他用真金白银买下了福音花园的房子，而修缮费用至少是他买房所用的二百个金比索的两倍。女儿在至圣童贞奉献日学校上学。两个世纪以来，上流社会的小姐们都会到那里去学习相夫教子的艺术和职责。在殖民时期和共和国初期，那里只接收名门望族的千金。但后来，那些被独立战争搞垮了的古老家族不得不向新时代的现实妥协，于是学校向所有付得起学费的人敞开大门，不再忧心她们的门第出身。但仍有一个基本条件，即入学的姑娘们必须是天主教家庭合法所生。不管怎样，那都是一所昂贵的学校，仅仅是费尔明娜·达萨在那里上学就表明了她家的经济实力，即便其社会地位未必出众。这些消息令弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨受到鼓舞，因为这一切都表明，这位长着一双杏核眼的美丽少女是他梦寐以求的姑娘。然而，他很快就发现姑娘父亲的严厉管教造成了难以逾越的障碍。其他女孩们都是结伴或是由一位年长的女佣陪伴上学，而费尔明娜·达萨不同，她的身边总跟着那位独身的姑妈，而且她的言行举止处处表明，她不被允许参加任何娱乐活动。
It was in this innocent way that Florentino Ariza began his secret life as a solitary hunter. From seven o’clock in the morning, he sat on the most hidden bench in the little park, pretending to read a book of verse in the shade of the almond trees, until he saw the impossible maiden walk by in her blue-striped uniform, stockings that reached to her knees, masculine laced oxfords, and a single thick braid with a bow at the end, which hung down her back to her waist. She walked with natural haughtiness, her head high, her eyes unmoving, her step rapid, her nose pointing straight ahead, her bag of books held against her chest with crossed arms, her doe’s gait making her seem immune to gravity. At her side, struggling to keep up with her, the aunt with the brown habit and rope of St. Francis did not allow him the slightest opportunity to approach. Florentino Ariza saw them pass back and forth four times a day and once on Sundays when they came out of High Mass, and just seeing the girl was enough for him. Little by little he idealized her, endowing her with improbable virtues and imaginary sentiments, and after two weeks he thought of nothing else but her. So he decided to send Fermina Daza a simple note written on both sides of the paper in his exquisite notary’s hand. But he kept it in his pocket for several days, thinking about how to hand it to her, and while he thought he wrote several more pages before going to bed, so that the original letter was turning into a dictionary of compliments, inspired by books he had learned by heart because he read them so often during his vigils in the park.
正是在这种情况下，天真的弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨开始了他孤独狩猎者的秘密生涯。从早七点起，他就独自一人坐在花园中一条不易被发现的长椅上，在杏树的树荫下假装读一本诗集，直到看见那位可望而不可即的姑娘走过。她身着蓝色条纹校服，带吊袜带的长袜一直拉到膝头，脚下一双系着交叉鞋带的男士短靴，一条粗粗的辫子从后背垂至腰间，辫梢上系着一个蝴蝶结。她走起路来有一种天生的高傲，昂首挺胸，目不斜视，步履轻快，鼻翼微收，交叉的双臂紧抱着胸前的书包。她走路的样子就像一头小母鹿，仿佛完全不受重力的束缚似的。在她身旁，身穿圣方济各会的褐色修士服、系着修士腰带的姑妈以吃力的步伐紧紧跟随，不给别人留出丝毫靠近她的空当。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨每天看着她们来回经过四次，星期日还有一次看着她们望完大弥撒从教堂走出来的机会。只要能看见自己心爱的姑娘，他就心满意足了。慢慢地，他将她理想化了，把一些不可能的美德和想象中的情感全都归属于她。两个星期后，除了她，他已经什么都不想了。他决定给她写一张简短的便条，便条两面都被他用书记员般漂亮的字体写得满满当当。但便条在口袋里装了好几天，他却一直不知该如何交给她。就在想法子的过程中，他每晚临睡前又会写上好几页。于是，最初的一封短信变成了一部写满甜言蜜语的宝典。里面词句的灵感都来自在花园等待时因反复阅读而背下来的书籍。
Searching for a way to give her the letter, he tried to make the acquaintance of some of the other students at Presentation Academy, but they were too distant from his world. Besides, after much thought, it did not seem prudent to let anyone else know of his intentions. Still, he managed to find out that Fermina Daza had been invited to a Saturday dance a few days after their arrival in the city, and her father had not allowed her to go, with a conclusive: “Everything in due course.” By the time the letter contained more than sixty pages written on both sides, Florentino Ariza could no longer endure the weight of his secret, and he unburdened himself to his mother, the only person with who m he allowed himself any confidences. Tránsito Ariza was moved to tears by her son’s innocence in matters of love, and she tried to guide him with her own knowledge. She began by convincing him not to deliver the lyrical sheaf of papers, since it would only frighten the girl of his dreams, who she supposed was as green as he in matters of the heart. The first step, she said, was to make her aware of his interest so that his declaration would not take her so much by surprise and she would have time to think.
为找到送信途径，他试图认识几个奉献日学校的学生。可是，她们和他的世界相距太远了。而且，反复衡量后，他觉得让其他人知道自己的意图并非明智之举。他还打听到，费尔明娜·达萨刚到这里不久，有人邀请她参加一次星期六舞会，而她的父亲只说了一句斩钉截铁的话就阻止了她：“什么时候，做什么事。”信已经正反两面写了六十张纸了，此时，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨再也无法承受心事的负担，将自己的秘密一股脑儿地倾诉给了母亲，他唯一可以交心的人。特兰西多·阿里萨被儿子的纯真爱情感动得老泪纵横，尝试用自己的智慧之光为儿子引路。她首先说服儿子不要把那沓写满情诗的信纸交给她，因为那样只会吓着他梦中的姑娘。她猜想在有关心灵的事上，姑娘和他一样是个嫩瓜。第一步，她对儿子说，应该首先让她发现他的热情，这样他的表白才不会令她感到唐突，而且也让她有时间考虑。
“But above all,” she said, “the first person you have to win over is not the girl but her aunt.”
“但最重要的是，”她对儿子说，“你首先要攻克的不是她，而是她的姑妈。”
Both pieces of advice were wise, no doubt, but they came too late. In reality, on the day when Fermina Daza let her mind wander for an instant from the reading lesson she was giving her aunt and raised her eyes to see who was walking along the passageway, Florentino Ariza had impressed her because of his air of vulnerability. That night, during supper, her father had mentioned the telegram, which was how she found out why Florentino Ariza had come to the house and what he did for a living. This information increased her interest, because for her, as for so many other people at that time, the invention of the telegraph had something magical about it. So that she recognized Florentino Ariza the first time she saw him reading under the trees in the little park, although it in no way disquieted her until her aunt told her he had been there for several weeks. Then, when they also saw him on Sundays as they came out of Mass, her aunt was convinced that all these meetings could not be casual. She said: “He is not going to all this trouble for me.” For despite her austere conduct and penitential habit, Aunt Escolástica had an instinct for life and a vocation for complicity, which were her greatest virtues, and the mere idea that a man was interested in her niece awakened an irresistible emotion in her. Fermina Daza, however, was still safe from even simple curiosity about love, and the only feeling that Florentino Ariza inspired in her was a certain pity, because it seemed to her that he was sick. But her aunt told her that one had to live a long time to know a man’s true nature, and she was convinced that the one who sat in the park to watch them walk by could only be sick with love.
两个忠告无疑都很明智，只是来得晚了点儿。事实上，就在那天，就在费尔明娜·达萨从正在教姑妈阅读的课文中失神，抬头去看是谁经过走廊的那一刹那，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨那副无依无靠的可怜样儿已经在她的脑海中留下了深刻的印象。晚饭时父亲谈起电报的事，于是她也就知道了他从事什么职业，来她家干什么。这些信息增加了她的兴趣，因为同那个时代很多人的想法一样，她觉着电报的发明与魔法有着某种关联。所以当她第一次看到弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨坐在花园的树下看书时，一眼就认出了他。但若非姑妈告诉她，他已经在那里好几个星期了，她也不会感到心中不安。后来，她们星期日望弥撒出来时又看见了他，姑妈这才恍然大悟，明白了那么多次的相遇绝非偶然。她说：“他肯定不是为了我而如此大费周章。”埃斯科拉斯蒂卡·达萨姑妈虽然行事严厉，身上还穿着忏悔服，但对生活的敏感和参与热忱是她最大的美德。单单是想到一个男人对自己的侄女感兴趣，她便生出一种无法抑制的激动。然而，费尔明娜·达萨却连对爱情基本的好奇心都没有。她对弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨唯一怀有的是一丝同情，因为她觉得他是得了什么病。但姑妈告诉她，要想看清一个男人的真正性情需要很长时间，而且她敢肯定，那个为了看她们经过而坐在花园中的小伙子得的只可能是相思病。
Foreseeing all kinds of adversities, she taught her to communicate in sign language, an indispensable strategy in forbidden love. These unexpected, almost childish antics caused an unfamiliar curiosity in Fermina Daza, but for several months it did not occur to her that it could go any further. She never knew when the diversion became a preoccupation and her blood frothed with the need to see him, and one night she awoke in terror because she saw him looking at her from the darkness at the foot of her bed. Then she longed with all her soul for her aunt’s predictions to come true, and in her prayers she begged God to give him the courage to hand her the letter just so she could know what it said.
预见到将来种种可能的困境，姑妈教女孩如何用手语和人交流，对于受阻的爱情来说，这是必须借助的手段。这种漫不经心、几近幼稚的嬉闹，令费尔明娜·达萨产生了一种从未有过的好奇。但几个月过去了，她没有想到这种好奇心竟会有所发展。不知从哪一刻起，这种消遣竟然变成了渴望。她浑身热血沸腾，急切地想要见到他。一天夜里，她惊醒了，因为她看见他就站在床脚，在黑暗中凝视着她。于是，她一心盼望姑妈的预言能够成真。祈祷时，她甚至祈求上帝赐予他勇气，让他把信交给她，只因她想知道他到底会写些什么。
“Poor thing,” her aunt had said. “He does not dare approach you because I am with you, but one day he will if his intentions are serious, and then he will give you a letter.”
“可怜的孩子，”姑妈说，“因为我在你旁边，他不敢走过来。但如果他是认真的，总有一天，他会过来交给你一封信。”
Aunt Escolástica was a refuge of understanding and affection for the only child of a loveless marriage. She had raised her since the death of her mother, and in her relations with Lorenzo Daza she behaved more like an accomplice than an aunt. So that the appearance of Florentino Ariza was for them another of the many intimate diversions they invented to pass the time. Four times a day, when they walked through the little Park of the Evangels, both hurried to look with a rapid glance at the thin, timid, unimpressive sentinel who was almost always dressed in black despite the heat and who pretended to read under the trees. “There he is,” said the one who saw him first, suppressing her laughter, before he raised his eyes and saw the two rigid, aloof women of his life as they crossed the park without looking at him.
对于这个源自一场没有爱情的婚姻的孤独女孩来说，埃斯科拉斯蒂卡姑妈是她倾吐心事的对象和情感的避风港。自从母亲死后，是姑妈一手将她带大。而在同洛伦索·达萨的关系上，埃斯科拉斯蒂卡表现得更像是女孩的同谋，而非姑妈。于是，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的出现成了她们俩私下里发明的又一种打发沉闷时光的消遣。她们每天经过福音花园四次，每一次两人都用快速的眼神急切地寻找那位清瘦的哨兵。他腼腆害羞，毫不起眼，不管天气有多炎热，始终穿着一身黑衣。他总是坐在树下假装看书。“他在那儿！”两人中最先发现他的那个会这样说，同时强忍住不让自己笑出声来。而这一切都发生在他抬眼看她们之前。等他抬起头，看到的则是两个一本正经、与他的世界相距遥远的女人，穿过花园时甚至看都不会看他一眼。
But her prayers were not answered. On the contrary. This occurred at the time that Florentino Ariza made his confession to his mother, who dissuaded him from handing Fermina Daza his seventy pages of compliments, so that she continued to wait for the rest of the year. Her preoccupation turned into despair as the December vacation approached, and she asked herself over and over again how she would see him and let him see her during the three months when she would not be walking to school. Her doubts were still unresolved on Christmas Eve, when she was shaken by the presentiment that he was in the crowd at Midnight Mass, looking at her, and this uneasiness flooded her heart. She did not dare to turn her head, because she was sitting between her father and her aunt, and she had to control herself so that they would not notice her agitation. But in the crowd leaving the church she felt him so close, so clearly, that an irresistible power forced her to look over her shoulder as she walked along the central nave and then, a hand’s breadth from her eyes, she saw those icy eyes, that livid face, those lips petrified by the terror of love. Dismayed by her own audacity, she seized Aunt Escolástica’s arm so she would not fall, and her aunt felt the icy perspiration on her hand through the lace mitt, and she comforted her with an imperceptible sign of unconditional complicity. In the din of fireworks and native drums, of colored lights in the doorways and the clamor of the crowd yearning for peace, Florentino Ariza wandered like a sleepwalker until dawn, watching the fiesta through his tears, dazed by the hallucination that it was he and not God who had been born that night.
然而她的祈祷并没有被接纳。事与愿违：这一切恰好发生在弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨向他的母亲倾诉心事之时，而后者正劝他不要交出那封近七十页的情书，于是，在那一年余下的日子里，费尔明娜·达萨只能是等待。随着十二月假期的临近，她的渴望慢慢变成了绝望。她反复不安地问自己，在不上学的三个月里，要怎么做才能见到他，并让他见到自己。到了圣诞夜，这个问题依然没有得到解决，直至她感觉到他正在子时弥撒的人群中凝视着她。她浑身战栗，紧张得心都要跳出来了。她不敢回头，因为她坐在父亲和姑妈之间。她必须极力克制自己，以免让他们察觉出她的慌乱。但当人们在一片混乱之中走出教堂时，她感到他和她的距离是如此之近，他的身影在躁动的人群中显得那般清晰，就在她迈出正殿时，一股不可抗拒的力量迫使她回过头，从肩膀上方望去。于是，在距离自己的双眼两拃远的地方，她看见了他那冰冷的眼睛、青紫色的面庞和因爱情的恐惧而变得僵硬的双唇。她被自己的胆大吓得魂不附体，一把抓住埃斯科拉斯蒂卡姑妈的手臂才没有摔倒。透过女孩的蕾丝无指手套，姑妈感觉到她冷汗涔涔，于是用一个不被人察觉的暗号安慰了她，向她表示自己无条件的支持。在举国上下一片爆竹和鼓乐声中，在家家门口悬挂的彩灯灯光中，在渴望平安的人群的欢呼声中，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨像个梦游者般徘徊到天亮。他透过泪眼打量着眼前的节日景象，被幻觉弄得精神恍惚，仿佛那一夜降生的不是上帝，而是他自己。
At first he thought that the lesson under the almond trees was a casual innovation due, perhaps, to the interminable repairs on the house, but in the days that followed he came to understand that Fermina Daza would be there, within view, every afternoon at the same time during the three months of vacation, and that certainty filled him with new hope. He did not have the impression that he was seen, he could not detect any sign of interest or rejection, but in her indifference there was a distinct radiance that encouraged him to persevere. Then, one afternoon toward the end of January, the aunt put her work on the chair and left her niece alone in the doorway under the shower of yellow leaves falling from the almond trees. Encouraged by the impetuous thought that this was an arranged opportunity, Florentino Ariza crossed the street and stopped in front of Fermina Daza, so close to her that he could detect the catches in her breathing and the floral scent that he would identify with her for the rest of his life. He spoke with his head high and with a determination that would be his again only half a century later, and for the same reason.
起初，他认为她们在杏树下读书只是个偶然变化，或许是因为房子在不断修缮。但接下来的几天，他看出费尔明娜·达萨在三个月的假期里，每天下午的同一时刻都会出现在那里，出现在他的视线中。这种确信给他注入了新的勇气。在他的印象中，她似乎并没有看见过他，他也从没察觉到她有任何感兴趣或者反感的表现。但是，在她的冷漠中闪烁着某种别样的东西，鼓励着他坚持下去。忽然有一天，在一月份的一个下午，姑妈将手中的活计放在椅子上，把侄女独自留在门廊旁边，留在了那散落一地的黄色杏树叶之间。这也许是一次故意安排好的机会，受到这个鲁莽假设的鼓舞，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨穿过大街，来到了费尔明娜·达萨面前。他离她那么近，甚至能听到她每一次的呼吸声，闻到她身上散发的馨香，在此生余下的岁月中，他正是靠着这种馨香来辨认她。他扬着头，坚定地对她说了一句话，这种坚定他半个世纪以后才再次拥有，而且为的是同一个缘由。
His delirium increased the following week, when he passed Fermina Daza’s house in despair at the siesta hour and saw that she and her aunt were sitting under the almond trees at the doorway. It was an open-air repetition of the scene he had witnessed the first afternoon in the sewing room: the girl giving a reading lesson to her aunt. But Fermina Daza seemed different without the school uniform, for she wore a narrow tunic with many folds that fell from her shoulders in the Greek style, and on her head she wore a garland of fresh gardenias that made her look like a crowned goddess. Florentino Ariza sat in the park where he was sure he would be seen, and then he did not have recourse to his feigned reading but sat with the book open and his eyes fixed on the illusory maiden, who did not even respond with a charitable glance.
接下来的一周，他的神志更加恍惚。午休时分，他无望地走过费尔明娜·达萨家，看见她和姑妈正坐在门廊旁的杏树下。此情此景正是在露天再现了那天下午他第一次在缝纫室见到她时的画面：女孩正在教姑妈读书。但没有穿校服的费尔明娜·达萨变了个样，她穿着一件针织长袍，许许多多的褶皱从肩膀处垂下来，就像古希腊女子穿的袍子。她头上戴着新鲜的栀子花编成的花环，看上去就像一位头顶王冠的女神。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨坐在花园中，断定她们能看见自己。这次他没有假装看书，只是将书打开，眼睛则始终盯着自己朝思暮想的姑娘。可她却连一个怜悯的眼神都没有给他。
It was not the voice that Fermina Daza had expected from him: it was sharp and clear, with a control that had nothing to do with his languid manner. Without lifting her eyes from her embroidery, she replied: “I cannot accept it without my father’s permission.” Florentino Ariza shuddered at the warmth of that voice, whose hushed tones he was not to forget for the rest of his life. But he held himself steady and replied without hesitation: “Get it.” Then he sweetened the command with a plea: “It is a matter of life and death.” Fermina Daza did not look at him, she did not interrupt her embroidering, but her decision opened the door a crack, wide enough for the entire world to pass through.
他的声音与费尔明娜·达萨期待的不同：口齿清晰，透出一股和他那忧郁的行为方式截然不同的自制力。她的目光没有离开手上的刺绣，回答他说：“没有父亲的允许，我不能收。”她温暖的声音使得弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨浑身颤抖，低沉的音色令他终生难忘。但他努力让自己站稳，马上又说：“那就去征得他的同意。”接着，他又将命令的语气转为柔声恳求，说：“这是生死攸关的大事。”费尔明娜·达萨没有看他，也没有停下手中的剌绣，但她的决定却像打开了一道门缝，足以让整个世界通过。
“Come back every afternoon,” she said to him, “and wait until I change my seat.”
“请您每天下午都到这里来，”她对他说，“等待我换椅子的时刻。”
Florentino Ariza did not understand what she meant until the following Monday when, from the bench in the little park, he saw the same scene with one variation: when Aunt Escolástica went into the house, Fermina Daza stood up and then sat in the other chair. Florentino Ariza, with a white camellia in his lapel, crossed the street and stood in front of her. He said: “This is the greatest moment of my life.” Fermina Daza did not raise her eyes to him, but she looked all around her and saw the deserted streets in the heat of the dry season and a swirl of dead leaves pulled along by the wind.
直到第二周的星期一，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨才弄明白她的意思。那天，坐在花园的长椅上，他看到了与以往同样的场景，只有一处改变：在埃斯科拉斯蒂卡姑妈进屋的时候，费尔明娜·达萨站起身来，坐到了另一把椅子上。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨身穿长礼服，扣眼上别着一朵白色山茶花。他穿过街道，站到她的面前，说：“这是我一生中最重要的时刻。”费尔明娜·达萨没有抬头看他，而是环顾了一下四周。旱季的一片昏沉中，街上空无一人，风席卷着枯叶。
“All I ask is that you accept a letter from me,” he said.
“我对您唯一的请求，便是请您收下我的一封信。”他对她说。
“Give it to me,” she said.
“把信给我吧。”她说。
Florentino Ariza had intended to give her the seventy sheets he could recite from memory after reading them so often, but then he decided on a sober and explicit half page in which he promised only what was essential: his perfect fidelity and his everlasting love. He took the letter out of his inside jacket pocket and held it before the eyes of the troubled embroiderer, who had still not dared to look at him. She saw the blue envelope trembling in a hand petrified with terror, and she raised the embroidery frame so he could put the letter on it, for she could not admit that she had noticed the trembling of his fingers. Then it happened: a bird shook himself among the leaves of the almond trees, and his droppings fell right on the embroidery. Fermina Daza moved the frame out of the way, hid it behind the chair so that he would not notice what had happened, and looked at him for the first time, her face aflame. Florentino Ariza was impassive as he held the letter in his hand and said: “It’s good luck.” She thanked him with her first smile and almost snatched the letter away from him, folded it, and hid it in her bodice. Then he offered her the camellia he wore in his lapel. She refused: “It is a flower of promises.” Then, conscious that their time was almost over, she again took refuge in her composure.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨本想把自己那读了太多遍、已背得滚瓜烂熟的七十页情书全都带给她，但后来还是决定只给她一封简明扼要的半页纸的短信。在这半页纸中，他对最为本质的东西做出了承诺，即他那可以经受住任何考验的忠诚和至死不渝的爱。他把信从长礼服的内兜里掏出来，放到备受煎熬的绣花姑娘眼前。直到这时，她都不敢看他一眼。她看见蓝色的信封在他那只因害怕而僵硬的手上颤抖，于是举起绣花绷子，好让他把信放在上面，因为她无法接受让他发现自己的手指也在颤抖。就在这时发生了一件事：一只鸟儿在杏树的枝叶间抖动了一下身子，于是，一摊鸟粪不偏不倚正掉在绣花布上。费尔明娜·达萨立刻撤回了绣花绷子，将它藏到椅子后面，以免让弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨注意到这件事。她第一次抬起她那羞得通红的脸颊，瞥了他一眼。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨若无其事地用手举着信，说：“这是个好兆头。”她又第一次用微笑向他表达了感激之情。随后，她几乎可以说是把信从他手中夺了过来，折好塞进紧身背心里。他将扣眼上别着的那朵山茶花献给她。她拒绝了：“这是定情之花。”随即，她意识到时间已到，于是又恢复了原先的姿势。
After Florentino Ariza saw her for the first time, his mother knew before he told her because he lost his voice and his appetite and spent the entire night tossing and turning in his bed. But when he began to wait for the answer to his first letter, his anguish was complicated by diarrhea and green vomit, he became disoriented and suffered from sudden fainting spells, and his mother was terrified because his condition did not resemble the turmoil of love so much as the devastation of cholera. Florentino Ariza’s godfather, an old homeopathic practitioner who had been Tránsito Ariza’s confidant ever since her days as a secret mistress, was also alarmed at first by the patient’s condition, because he had the weak pulse, the hoarse breathing, and the pale perspiration of a dying man. But his examination revealed that he had no fever, no pain anywhere, and that his only concrete feeling was an urgent desire to die. All that was needed was shrewd questioning, first of the patient and then of his mother, to conclude once again that the symptoms of love were the same as those of cholera. He prescribed infusions of linden blossoms to calm the nerves and suggested a change of air so he could find consolation in distance, but Florentino Ariza longed for just the opposite: to enjoy his martyrdom.
自从弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨第一次见到她后，他的母亲其实还没等儿子说起，便发现了他的心事，因为他开始寡言少语，茶饭不思，辗转反侧，夜夜难眠。但在他等待姑娘的第一封回信时，焦虑使情况变得更为复杂了。他腹泻，吐绿水，晕头转向，还常常突然昏厥。这一次可把他的母亲吓坏了，因为这状况不像是因为爱情而心神不宁，倒像是染上了霍乱。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的教父是一个精通顺势疗法的老头儿，从特兰西多·阿里萨还在当地下情人时起，就一直是她最信赖的人。老人看到病人的情况也吓了一跳，因为弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨脉搏微弱，呼吸沉重，像垂死之人一样冒着虚汗。但经检查后得知，病人并没有发烧，浑身也没有哪一处疼痛，唯一确切的感觉就是迫切地希望自己死掉。老人随后探询了隐情，先是向弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨，而后又向他的母亲，于是再一次证实了相思病具有和霍乱相同的症状。他开出方子，用椴树花熬水来镇定神经，并且建议病人外出去散散心，希望通过距离让他得到安慰。可弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的愿望却恰恰与之相反：他甘愿享受煎熬。
“Now go,” she said, “and don’t come back until I tell you to.”
“现在，您走吧，”她说，“没有我的通知，请您不要再来了。”
In the Postal Agency, of course, they did not agree. Florentino Ariza had become negligent, and he was so distracted that he confused the flags that announced the arrival of the mail, and one Wednesday he hoisted the German flag when the ship was from the Leyland Company and carried the mail from Liverpool, and on another day he flew the flag of the United States when the ship was from the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique and carried the mail from Saint-Nazaire. These confusions of love caused such chaos in the distribution of the mail and provoked so many protests from the public that if Florentino Ariza did not lose his job it was because Lotario Thugut kept him at the telegraph and took him to play the violin in the Cathedral choir. They had a friendship difficult to understand because of the difference in their ages, for they might have been grandfather and grandson, but they got along at work as well as they did in the taverns around the port, which were frequented by everyone out for the evening regardless of social class, from drunken beggars to young gentlemen in tuxedos who fled the gala parties at the Social Club to eat fried mullet and coconut rice. Lotario Thugut was in the habit of going there after the last shift at the telegraph office, and dawn often found him drinking Jamaican punch and playing the accordion with the crews of madmen from the Antillean schooners. He was corpulent and bull-necked, with a golden beard and a liberty cap that he wore when he went out at night, and all he needed was a string of bells to look like St. Nicholas. At least once a week he ended the evening with a little night bird, as he called them, one of the many who sold emergency love in a transient hotel for sailors. When he met Florentino Ariza, the first thing he did, with a certain magisterial delight, was to initiate him into the secrets of his paradise. He chose for him the little birds he thought best, he discussed their price and style with them and offered to pay in advance with his own money for their services. But Florentino Ariza did not accept: he was a virgin, and he had decided not to lose his virginity unless it was for love.
但邮局里的人当然不这样想。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨自甘堕落，成了一个懒汉。他总是心不在焉，以至于把通告邮件到达的旗子都搞混了。一个星期三，他升起了德国旗，而到达的船只却是利兰[2]公司的，运来的邮件是利物浦的；还有一天，他升起了美国旗，而来船却是大西洋轮船总局[3]的，运送的是来自圣纳泽尔[4]的邮件。爱情扰得他心神不宁，频频出错，引起了众人的抗议。他没有丢掉工作，完全是因为洛达里奥·图古特把他留在了电报室，还带他去教堂唱诗班拉小提琴。他们之间的友谊令人费解，毕竟，两人年龄悬殊，几乎是爷孙两辈。但他们无论在工作中，还是在港口的小酒馆里，都相处融洽。港口的小酒馆是那些彻夜不归的人的去处，三教九流的人都有，从靠人施舍的酒鬼到衣着考究的少爷，而后者往往是从社交俱乐部的豪华宴会中溜到这里来吃炸梭鱼和椰汁饭的。洛达里奥·图古特常常在电报室值完最后一班后到这里来，一边喝着牙买加甜酒，一边和那些在安的列斯群岛跑船的疯狂水手们一起拉手风琴，直到天亮。他身材高大，动作有点像老乌龟，胡子是金黄色的，每次晚上出门，总带着一顶弗里吉亚帽。就差在头上插一串风铃草，否则他就和圣尼古拉[5]一模一样了。每个星期，他至少要和一只“夜鸟”过上一晚，他就是这么称呼那些在小旅馆里向水手出卖应急爱情的姑娘们的。刚认识弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨时，他以言传身教的喜悦带着他做的第一件事，就是把他领到自己的秘密天堂。他为他挑选自己认为最好的夜鸟，同她们讨价还价，商定方式，还用自己的钱提前付了账。但弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨没有接受：他还是童男，并且决心除非因为爱情，否则绝不失掉童贞。（注：[2] 利兰，英国西北部城镇。[3] 大西洋轮船总局，法国航运公司。[4] 圣纳泽尔，法国西部城市。[5] 圣尼古拉，天主教圣人，被视为水手的保护神。）
“Take advantage of it now, while you are young, and suffer all you can,” she said to him, “because these things don’t last your whole life.”
“趁年轻，好好利用这个机会，尽力去尝遍所有痛苦，”她对儿子说，“这种事可不是一辈子什么时候都会遇到的。”
Tránsito Ariza was a freed quadroon whose instinct for happiness had been frustrated by poverty, and she took pleasure in her son’s suffering as if it were her own. She made him drink the infusions when he became delirious, and she smothered him in wool blankets to keep away the chills, but at the same time she encouraged him to enjoy his prostration.
特兰西多·阿里萨是个随性的黑白混血女人，向往幸福，却为贫穷所累。她对儿子的痛苦感同身受，并从中得到满足。儿子神志不清时，她喂他喝锻树花水；儿子浑身发冷时，她为他裹上羊毛毯子。与此同时，她还为他鼓劲，让他在灰心丧气时也能得到安慰。
As opposed to what his corpulence might suggest, Lotario Thugut had the rosebud genitals of a cherub, but this must have been a fortunate defect, because the most tarnished birds argued over who would have the chance to go to bed with him, and then they shrieked as if their throats were being cut, shaking the buttresses of the palace and making its ghosts tremble in fear. They said he used an ointment made of snake venom that inflamed women’s loins, but he swore he had no resources other than those that God had given him. He would say with uproarious laughter: “It’s pure love.” Many years had to pass before Florentino Ariza would understand that perhaps he was right. He was convinced at last, at a more advanced stage of his sentimental education, when he met a man who lived like a king by exploiting three women at the same time. The three of them rendered their accounts at dawn, prostrate at his feet to beg forgiveness for their meager profits, and the only gratification they sought was that he go to bed with the one who brought him the most money. Florentino Ariza thought that terror alone could induce such indignities, but one of the three girls surprised him with the contradictory truth.
与他高大的身材使人产生的联想相反，洛达里奥·图古特有一个只有天使才有的那种小玩意儿，就像玫瑰花的骨朵儿。但这恐怕是一个幸运的缺陷，因为那些最放荡的夜鸟都争先恐后地抢着跟他睡觉。她们像被扼断了喉咙似的叫声震动了整座宫殿的立柱，吓得鬼魂们都直打哆嗦。据说，他是用了一种用蛇毒配制的油膏，能让女人们欲火焚身，但他发誓说，除了上帝赐予的东西，他没有使用其他任何手段。他大笑着说：“这完全是因为爱。”弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨还要经过很多年，才能理解洛达里奥·图古特或许说得不假。而直到他受到更进一步的感情教育，认识了一个同时压榨三个女人、过着皇帝般生活的男人时，才彻底相信了这句话。那三个女人每天清晨都向这个男人交账，跪在他脚边，请求他原谅自己收入之微薄。而她们唯一能够期待的奖赏就是，他将同她们中给他挣钱最多的那个女人睡觉。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨本以为只有恐惧才能造成这样的屈辱。然而，其中一个女人的回答却令他大吃一惊。
The hotel was a colonial palace that had seen better days, and its great marble salons and rooms were divided into plasterboard cubicles with peepholes, which were rented out as much for watching as for doing. There was talk of busybodies who had their eyes poked out with knitting needles, of a man who recognized his own wife as the woman he was spying on, of well-bred gentlemen who came dis guised as tarts to forget who they were with the boatswains on shore leave, and of so many other misadventures of observers and observed that the mere idea of going into the next room terrified Florentino Ariza. And so Lotario Thugut could never persuade him that watching and letting himself be watched were the refinements of European princes.
这家旅馆是一座殖民时期的贵族府邸，如今辉煌不再。宽敞的大厅和大理石房间被硬纸板隔成了一个个小房间，硬纸板上满是大头针刺出的小孔。房间租给来此寻欢作乐的人，同样也租给那些偷窥的人。据说，有些偷窥者被毛衣针戳瞎了一只眼睛，还有的竟发现窥到的是自己的妻子，也有一些出身名门的贵族，化装成淫荡的女人来到这里，为的是寻找途经此地的水手长们发泄一番。此外，还有种种关于偷窥者和被偷窥者不幸遭遇的传说，以至于弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨单是想到探头去偷看一下隔壁房间，都吓得心惊肉跳。因此，洛达里奥·图古特最终也没能使他相信，看别人和让别人看都是欧洲皇室和贵族的雅好。
It was not so much for his talents as a fornicator as for his personal charm that Lotario Thugut had become one of the most esteemed clients of the hotel. Florentino Ariza, because he was so quiet and elusive, also earned the esteem of the owner, and during the most arduous period of his grief he would lock himself in the suffocating little rooms to read verses and tearful serialized love stories, and his reveries left nests of dark swallows on the balconies and the sound of kisses and the beating of wings in the stillness of siesta. At dusk, when it was cooler, it was impossible not to listen to the conversations of men who came to console themselves at the end of their day with hurried love. So that Florentino Ariza heard about many acts of disloyalty, and even some state secrets, which important clients and even local officials confided to their ephemeral lovers, not caring if they could be overheard in the adjoining rooms. This was also how he learned that four nautical leagues to the north of the Sotavento Archipelago, a Spanish galleon had been lying under water since the eighteenth century with its cargo of more than five hundred billion pesos in pure gold and precious stones. The story astounded him, but he did not think of it again until a few months later, when his love awakened in him an overwhelming desire to salvage the sunken treasure so that Fermina Daza could bathe in showers of gold.
洛达里奥·图古特之所以成为旅馆中讨人喜欢的客人，与其说是因为他床第间的本事，倒不如说是因为他的个人魅力。而弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨呢，由于他沉默寡言，且个性难以捉摸，也受到旅馆主人的青睐。在那些最痛苦艰难的日子里，他常常把自己关在旅馆闷热的房间中，朗读催人泪下的诗歌或连载的爱情小说。他的梦幻在阳台上筑起黑燕子的巢穴，在午睡的昏沉中留下亲吻和扇动翅膀的窸窣。黄昏时，酷热渐渐退去，他不可避免地听到隔壁传来的谈话声，人们来此借由片刻的欢愉以缓解一天的疲劳。就这样，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨听到了许多私下议论，甚至有一些是国家机密，由那些身份显赫的客人甚或地方官员透露给他们一夜情的爱人，却没有想到隔墙有耳。也正是由此，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨得知，索塔文托群岛以北四西班牙海里的地方，躺着一艘十八世纪的西班牙沉船，上面载有五千多亿纯金比索还有宝石。这个故事令他惊诧不已，但要等到几个月后，他才会再次想起这件事。爱情的疯狂魔力激起了他打捞这座沉没宝藏的欲望，为的是能让费尔明娜·达萨在金子池里打滚。
“These are things,” she said, “you do only for love.”
“这一切，”她对他说，“只可能是因为爱。”
Years later, when he tried to remember what the maiden idealized by the alchemy of poetry really was like, he could not distinguish her from the heartrending twilights of those times. Even when he observed her, unseen, during those days of longing when he waited for a reply to his first letter, he saw her transfigured in the afternoon shimmer of two o’clock in a shower of blossoms from the almond trees where it was always April regardless of the season of the year. The only reason he was interested in accompanying Lotario Thugut on his violin from the privileged vantage point in the choir was to see how her tunic fluttered in the breeze raised by the canticles. But his own delirium finally interfered with that pleasure, for the mystic music seemed so innocuous compared with the state of his soul that he attempted to make it more exciting with love waltzes, and Lotario Thugut found himself obliged to ask that he leave the choir. This was the time when he gave in to his desire to eat the gardenias that Tránsito Ariza grew in pots in the patio, so that he could know the taste of Fermina Daza. It was also the time when he happened to find in one of his mother’s trunks a liter bottle of the cologne that the sailors from the Hamburg-American Line sold as contraband, and he could not resist the temptation to sample it in order to discover other tastes of his beloved. He continued to drink from the bottle until dawn, and he became drunk on Fermina Daza in abrasive swallows, first in the taverns around the port and then as he stared out to sea from the jetties where lovers without a roof over their heads made consoling love, until at last he succumbed to unconsciousness. Tránsito Ariza, who had waited for him until six o’clock in the morning with her heart in her mouth, searched for him in the most improbable hiding places, and a short while after noon she found him wallowing in a pool of fragrant vomit in a cove of the bay where drowning victims washed ashore.
多年以后，当他试图回忆那个被诗歌的魔力理想化了的姑娘原本的模样时，却发现自己无法将她从昔日那些支离破碎的黄昏中分离出来。即便是在急切等待着她的第一封回信的那些日子里，在他悄悄地望着她却不让她发现的那些日子里，他看到的也只是午后两点的阳光下和纷纷扬扬的杏花中她隐约的轮廓，无论季节如何变化，那情景始终都停留在四月。而他之所以愿意站上唱诗楼的首席位置，用小提琴与洛达里奥合奏，唯一的目的就是看她的长裙如何在赞美诗的歌声中轻轻飘动。但他的出神最终让他丧失了这种愉悦的机会：神秘的宗教音乐对他当时的灵魂来说是那么不痛不痒，于是他试着用爱的华尔兹为它注入激情，最后，洛达里奥·图古特不得不把他从唱诗班中开除了。就是在那个时候，他屈从于自己的欲望，偷食了特兰西多·阿里萨在院中花坛里种的栀子花。就这样，他知道了费尔明娜·达萨的味道。同样也是在那个时候，他偶然间在母亲的一个箱子里找到一瓶一升装的香水，是汉堡至美国航线的海员的走私品。他禁不住诱惑尝了尝，想从中寻找深爱的女人其他的味道。他喝了一口又一口，细细品味直到天亮，最终醉倒在费尔明娜·达萨的芬芳之中。他先是在港口的小酒馆里喝，然后又来到海边的防波堤上。在那里，无家可归的恋人们通过做爱彼此安慰。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨出神地望着大海，最终失去了意识。特兰西多·阿里萨提心吊胆地等他到早晨六点，然后跑遍各个意想不到的角落去找他。午后不久，她终于在一个常有人跳海的海湾找到了他，当时他正在一摊散发着香气的呕吐物中翻滚。
He had given Fermina Daza the letter a month before, and since then he had often broken his promise not to return to the little park, but he had been very careful not to be seen. Nothing had changed. The reading lesson under the trees ended at about two o’clock, when the city was waking from its siesta, and Fermina Daza embroidered with her aunt until the day began to cool. Florentino Ariza did not wait for the aunt to go into the house, and he crossed the street with a martial stride that allowed him to overcome the weakness in his knees, but he spoke to her aunt, not to Fermina Daza.
其实自从一个月前把信交给费尔明娜·达萨，他已经多次违背不再去小花园的承诺，只不过加倍小心不让自己被发现罢了。一切与以往并无不同。费尔明娜·达萨和姑妈在树下读书，到下午两点左右、全城刚刚从午睡中醒来时结束，然后一起刺绣直到热浪退去。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨不等姑妈走进屋，便迈着英姿飒爽的步伐穿过马路，这种步伐帮助他那软软的膝盖支撑住身体。但他没有走向费尔明娜·达萨，而是径直朝姑妈走去。
She took advantage of the hiatus of his convalescence to reproach him for his passivity as he waited for the answer to his letter. She reminded him that the weak would never enter the kingdom of love, which is a harsh and ungenerous kingdom, and that women give themselves only to men of resolute spirit, who provide the security they need in order to face life. Florentino Ariza learned the lesson, perhaps too well. Tránsito Ariza could not hide a feeling of pride, more carnal than maternal, when she saw him leave the notions shop in his black suit and stiff felt hat, his lyrical bow tie and celluloid collar, and she asked him as a joke if he was going to a funeral. He answered, his ears flaming: “It’s almost the same thing.” She realized that he could hardly breathe with fear, but his determination was invincible. She gave him her final warnings and her blessing, and laughing for all she was worth, she promised him another bottle of cologne so they could celebrate his victory together.
她在儿子身体康复期间，训斥了他被动等候回音的消极状态。她提醒他，弱者永远无法进入爱情的王国，因为那是一个严酷、吝啬的国度，女人只会对意志坚强的男人俯首称臣，因为只有这样的男人才能带给她们安全感，她们渴望那种安全感，以面对生活的挑战。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨领会了这一课的精神，甚至也许领会得有些过头。当特兰西多·阿里萨看到儿子身穿黑色礼服，头戴呢帽，赛璐珞衣领上打着富有诗意的蝴蝶结，走出杂货铺的那一刻，她难以掩饰心中的骄傲，内心生出的爱欲甚至多过母亲的慈爱。她戏谑地问儿子是不是要去参加葬礼。儿子面红耳赤地说：“差不多。”她注意到他紧张得几乎喘不上气来，但决心是不可动摇的。她最后叮嘱了儿子几句，祝福了他，还嬉笑地向他许诺，会再给他弄瓶香水以庆祝他的凯旋。
“Please be so kind as to leave me alone for a moment with the young lady,” he said. “I have something important to tell her.”
“请让我单独和小姐待片刻，”他说，“我有重要的事要对她说。”
“What impertinence!” her aunt said to him. “There is nothing that has to do with her that I cannot hear.”
“放肆！”姑妈对他说，“她的事没有什么是我不能听的。”
“Then I will not say anything to her,” he said, “but I warn you that you will be responsible for the consequences.”
“那么我就不说了，”他说，“但我要提醒您，您要对此负责。”
That was not the manner Escolástica Daza expected from the ideal sweetheart, but she stood up in alarm because for the first time she had the overwhelming impression that Florentino Ariza was speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So she went into the house to change needles and left the two young people alone under the almond trees in the doorway.
埃斯科拉斯蒂卡·达萨心目中的理想爱情并非如此，但她还是吓得站了起来，因为她生平头一次被这样一个想法震慑住了，即弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨是在圣神的启示下讲话。于是，她走进屋去换绣花针，把两个年轻人留在门口的杏树下。
In reality, Fermina Daza knew very little about this taciturn suitor who had appeared in her life like a winter swallow and whose name she would not even have known if it had not been for his signature on the letter. She had learned that he was the fatherless son of an unmarried woman who was hardworking and serious but forever marked by the fiery stigma of her single youthful mistake. She had learned that he was not a messenger, as she had supposed, but a well-qualified assistant with a promising future, and she thought that he had delivered the telegram to her father only as a pretext for seeing her. This idea moved her. She also knew that he was one of the musicians in the choir, and although she never dared raise her eyes to look at him during Mass, she had the revelation one Sunday that while the other instruments played for everyone, the violin played for her alone. He was not the kind of man she would have chosen. His found ling’s eyeglasses, his clerical garb, his mysterious resources had awakened in her a curiosity that was difficult to resist, but she had never imagined that curiosity was one of the many masks of love.
事实上，对这位像冬天的燕子一样出现在她生活中的默默追求者，费尔明娜·达萨了解得很少。要不是信上的落款，她甚至连他的名字也不知道。那以后，她打听到他是一个没有父亲的孩子，母亲是一位勤劳而正派的独身女人，无奈却被年轻时唯一的一次不检点打上了永久的烙印。她还得知，他并非像她猜想的那样是一个送电报的邮递员，而是电报室出色的副手，而且很受器重。她甚至认为他那天来给父亲送电报，只是一个为了见到她的借口。这个猜测让她感动不已。她还知道他是唱诗班的乐师之一。尽管在望弥撒时，她从不敢抬眼去证实一下。但一个星期日，她突然发现其他乐器都是在为众人演奏，只有小提琴是为她一个人拉的。他原本不是她会选择的那种人，但他那过时的眼镜、神甫似的长袍，以及举手投足间的神秘感激起了她难以抵抗的好奇心，而她却从来没有想过，好奇心也是爱情的种种伪装之一。
She herself could not explain why she had accepted the letter. She did not reproach herself for doing so, but the ever-increasing pressure to respond complicated her life. Her father’s every word, his casual glances, his most trivial gestures, seemed set with traps to uncover her secret. Her state of alarm was such that she avoided speaking at the table for fear some slip might betray her, and she became evasive even with her Aunt Escolástica, who nonetheless shared her repressed anxiety as if it were her own. She would lock herself in the bathroom at odd hours and for no reason other than to reread the letter, attempting to discover a secret code, a magic formula hidden in one of the three hundred fourteen letters of its fifty-eight words, in the hope they would tell her more than they said. But all she found was what she had understood on first reading, when she ran to lock herself in the bathroom, her heart in a frenzy, and tore open the envelope hoping for a long, feverish letter, and found only a perfumed note whose determination frightened her.
她自己也无法解释为什么要收下他的信。她并不为此自责，但越来越急迫的作答需要成了她生活中的一个负担。父亲的每一句话，每一个偶然的眼神，每一个再普通不过的动作和表情，在她看来都像是为套出她的秘密而设下的陷阱。她惊恐万分，在饭桌上尽量避免讲话，唯恐一不小心暴露了自己的秘密。她甚至对埃斯科拉斯蒂卡姑妈也闪烁其词，虽然姑妈像对待自己的心事一样，分担着她压抑在心中的烦恼。她常常动不动就把自己关在卫生间里，一遍又一遍地读那封信，试图从中发现某种秘密代码，某种隐藏在那三百一十四个字母、五十八个单词间的神秘暗语，希望这些词句能表达出比它们原本所表达的更多的含义。然而，她并没有发现比她初读时所理解的更多的意思。当初刚拿到信时，她冲进卫生间，把自己锁在里面，心怦怦跳个不停。她撕开信封，幻想这必定是一封感情丰富、热情似火的长信，但看到的却只是一页散发着芳香的纸，不过信中表露的决心着实吓了她一跳。
At first she had not even thought seriously that she was obliged to respond, but the letter was so explicit that there was no way to avoid it. Meanwhile, in the torment of her doubts, she was surprised to find herself thinking about Florentino Ariza with more frequency and interest than she cared to allow, and she even asked herself in great distress why he was not in the little park at the usual hour, forgetting that it was she who had asked him not to return while she was preparing her reply. And so she thought about him as she never could have imagined thinking about anyone, having premonitions that he would be where he was not, wanting him to be where he could not be, awaking with a start, with the physical sensation that he was looking at her in the darkness while she slept, so that on the afternoon when she heard his resolute steps on the yellow leaves in the little park it was difficult for her not to think this was yet another trick of her imagination. But when he demanded her answer with an authority that was so different from his languor, she managed to overcome her fear and tried to dodge the issue with the truth: she did not know how to answer him. But Florentino Ariza had not leapt across an abyss only to be shooed away with such excuses.
起初她都没有认真想过一定要回信，但信上说得清清楚楚，她无法逃避。正是在这时，在她反反复复犹豫不决时，她惊讶地发现自己想念弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的频繁和深切程度已经超过了原本的意愿。她甚至痛苦地问自己，他为什么没有在往常的时间出现在小花园，竟忘记了正是自己让他在她思考如何回信的这段日子不要再来。她从未如此这般地思念某个人。他明明没有在那里，她却设想他在；她盼望他出现在根本不可能出现的地方；她从梦中惊醒，真真切切地感觉到，她睡觉时他就在黑暗之中凝视着自己。如此种种，以至于当她觉察到他坚定的脚步踏在小花园那黄色的落叶中时，费了很大努力才相信这不是幻觉对她的又一次戏弄。但当弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨以一种和他的郁郁寡欢极不相称的威严向她索要回信，她终于从惶恐之中回过神来，试图逃避，直言说，她不知道如何答复。然而，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨并没有知难而退。
“If you accepted the letter,” he said to her, “it shows a lack of courtesy not to answer it.”
“既然您收下了信，”他说，“那么，不回信是不礼貌的。”
That was the end of the labyrinth. Fermina Daza regained her self-control, begged his pardon for the delay, and gave him her solemn word that he would have an answer before the end of the vacation. And he did. On the last Friday in February, three days before school reopened, Aunt Escolástica went to the telegraph office to ask how much it cost to send a telegram to Piedras de Moler, a village that did not even appear on the list of places served by the telegraph, and she allowed Florentino Ariza to attend her as if she had never seen him before, but when she left she pretended to forget a breviary covered in lizard skin, leaving it on the counter, and in it there was an envelope made of linen paper with golden vignettes. Delirious with joy, Florentino Ariza spent the rest of the afternoon eating roses and reading the note letter by letter, over and over again, and the more he read the more roses he ate, and by midnight he had read it so many times and had eaten so many roses that his mother had to hold his head as if he were a calf and force him to swallow a dose of castor oil.
于是，兜兜转转到此结束。费尔明娜·达萨终于下定了决心，为自己的拖延致歉，并郑重承诺：假期结束前他一定会收到答复。她也的确履行了承诺。二月的最后一个星期五，就在学校开学前三天，埃斯科拉斯蒂卡姑妈来到电报室，询问发一封电报到磨盘村需要花多少钱，而这个地名甚至都不在电报服务的区域范围内。她让弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨接待了她，装作完全不认识对方。临走时，她假装把一本用蜥蜴皮装裱的弥撒经书落在了柜台上，里面夹着一个烫着金色花纹的亚麻信封。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨被幸福弄得神魂颠倒，一边嚼着玫瑰花瓣一边读信，度过了整个下午。他逐字逐句、反反复复地读着，读得越多，吃下的玫瑰花瓣也越多，以至于他的母亲不得不像对付小牛犊一样强按着他的头，逼他吞下一剂蓖麻油。
After the first letter that she carried to the telegraph office with an ember of revenge against her own destiny, she had allowed an almost daily exchange of messages in what appeared to be casual encounters on the street, but she did not have the courage to permit a conversation, no matter how banal and fleeting it might be. Still, after three months she realized that her niece was not the victim of a girlish fancy, as it had seemed at first, and that her own life was threatened by the fire of love. The truth was that Escolástica Daza had no other means of support except her brother’s charity, and she knew that his tyrannical nature would never forgive such a betrayal of his confidence. But when it was time for the final decision, she did not have the heart to cause her niece the same irreparable grief that she had been obliged to nurture ever since her youth, and she permitted her to use a strategy that allowed her the illusion of innocence. The method was simple: Fermina Daza would leave her letter in some hiding place along her daily route from the house to the Academy, and in that letter she would indicate to Florentino Ariza where she expected to find his answer. Florentino Ariza did the same. In this way, for the rest of the year, the conflicts in Aunt Escolástica’s conscience were transferred to baptisteries in churches, holes in trees, and crannies in ruined colonial fortresses. Sometimes their letters were soaked by rain, soiled by mud, torn by adversity, and some were lost for a variety of other reasons, but they always found a way to be in touch with each other again.
自从她带着心中残存的那点儿对自己命运的报复之心，将第一封回信带到电报室起，她便开始允许两人每天看似偶然地在街上相遇，交换信件。但她始终没有勇气为他们安排一次哪怕是平常而又短暂的谈话。就在第三个月末尾的时候，她明白了侄女的所作所为并非像她起初认为的那样是青春期一时的心血来潮，而她自己的生活也受到了这场爱情之火的威胁。事实上，除了哥哥仁慈的接济，埃斯科拉斯蒂卡·达萨并没有其他生活来源。她知道，以哥哥专横的性格，他绝不会原谅自己如此嘲弄他的信任。但到了最后抉择的关头，她还是不忍心让侄女遭受自己从年轻时起就遭受的那种无可挽回的不幸。于是，她允许侄女采用一种可以给她带来天真幻想的策略。方法很简单：费尔明娜·达萨把信放在每天从家到学校途中某个隐秘的地方，同时在信上向弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨指明她希望在哪里取到回信。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨也如此照做。就这样，在那一年余下的日子里，埃斯科拉斯蒂卡·达萨内心矛盾地看着他们从教堂的圣水池转移到树洞，再到殖民时期城堡废墟的裂缝中。有时候，他们找到信时，它已被雨水淋湿，沾满泥点，或是不幸被弄烂了。还有时，由于种种原因信丢了，但他们总有办法重新建立起联系。
It was the year they fell into devastating love. Neither one could do anything except think about the other, dream about the other, and wait for letters with the same impatience they felt when they answered them. Never in that delirious spring, or in the following year, did they have the opportunity to speak to each other. Moreover, from the moment they saw each other for the first time until he reiterated his determination a half century later, they never had the opportunity to be alone or to talk of their love. But during the first three months not one day went by that they did not write to each other, and for a time they wrote twice a day, until Aunt Escolástica became frightened by the intensity of the blaze that she herself had helped to ignite.
这是爱情之火熊熊燃烧的一年。无论在他还是她的生活中，除了想念对方、梦见对方、焦急地等信并回信，便再没有其他事情。在那个如痴如醉的春天，以及接下来的第二年，他们再没有面对面地讲过话。甚至于，自从他们第一次见到彼此，直到半个世纪后他对她重申自己的誓言，在此期间他们再也没有单独见过一面，互诉爱语。但在最初的三个月，他们没有一天不在给对方写信，有一段时间甚至一天两封。面对自己助燃的这把吞噬一切的烈火，埃斯科拉斯蒂卡姑妈都有些害怕起来。
Florentino Ariza wrote every night. Letter by letter, he had no mercy as he poisoned himself with the smoke from the palm oil lamps in the back room of the notions shop, and his letters became more discursive and more lunatic the more he tried to imitate his favorite poets from the Popular Library, which even at that time was approaching eighty volumes. His mother, who had urged him with so much fervor to enjoy his torment, became concerned for his health. “You are going to wear out your brains,” she shouted at him from the bedroom when she heard the first roosters crow. “No woman is worth all that.” She could not remember ever having known anyone in such a state of unbridled passion. But he paid no attention to her. Sometimes he went to the office without having slept, his hair in an uproar of love after leaving the letter in the prearranged hiding place so that Fermina Daza would find it on her way to school. She, on the other hand, under the watchful eye of her father and the vicious spying of the nuns, could barely manage to fill half a page from her notebook when she locked herself in the bathroom or pretended to take notes in class. But this was not only due to her limited time and the danger of being taken by surprise, it was also her nature that caused her letters to avoid emotional pitfalls and confine themselves to relating the events of her daily life in the utilitarian style of a ship’s log. In reality they were distracted letters, intended to keep the coals alive without putting her hand in the fire, while Florentino Ariza burned himself alive in every line. Desperate to infect her with his own madness, he sent her miniaturist’s verses inscribed with the point of a pin on camellia petals. It was he, not she, who had the audacity to enclose a lock of his hair in one letter, but he never received the response he longed for, which was an entire strand of Fermina Daza’s braid. He did move her at last to take one step further, and from that time on she began to send him the veins of leaves dried in dictionaries, the wings of butterflies, the feathers of magic birds, and for his birthday she gave him a square centimeter of St. Peter Clavier’s habit, which in those days was being sold in secret at a price far beyond the reach of a schoolgirl her age. One night, without any warning, Fermina Daza awoke with a start: a solo violin was serenading her, playing the same waltz over and over again. She shuddered when she realized that each note was an act of thanksgiving for the petals from her herbarium, for the moments stolen from arithmetic to write her letters, for her fear of examinations when she was thinking more about him than about the natural sciences, but she did not dare believe that Florentino Ariza was capable of such imprudence.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨每晚都不顾自己的身体拼命地写信。在杂货铺的里间，忍受着椰油灯散发出的有损健康的烟雾，他一字一句地写着。他越是努力模仿自己喜爱的“人民图书馆”那几位诗人近八十册的作品，信就写得越长，且越混乱。他的母亲曾那般热情地鼓励他尽情享受痛苦，如今也开始为他的健康忧心。“你把脑子都要耗尽了，”天明鸡叫时，她在卧室对他喊道，“没有哪个女人值得你这样。”她从不记得有谁曾如此迷失。但他没有理会母亲的话。有时，他彻夜不眠，为了能让费尔明娜·达萨在上学路上拿到信，他一大早就将信放到约定的秘密地点，然后带着一头因爱情而蓬乱的头发，来到办公室。而费尔明娜·达萨则在父亲的监视和修女们不怀好意的窥探下，把自己关进洗手间，或是在课堂上假装做笔记时，用练习本写上不到半页。但不仅由于时间紧迫和害怕，更由于性格使然，她的信从不触及感情问题，而只是像工工整整的航海日志一样讲讲日常琐事。事实上，这些信对她而言只是一种消遣，用来维持炭火不灭，但不必把手伸到火中，而弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨却在信中的每一行里把自己燃烧殆尽。他渴望用自己的狂热感染她，用大头针在山茶花的花瓣上为她刻下微型诗句。是他而非她，大胆地将自己的一缕头发夹进信中，却没有收到渴望的回赠——费尔明娜·达萨一根完整的秀发。不过，他至少让她向前迈了一步，因为从那之后，她开始给他寄来用字典夹干的叶脉、蝴蝶的翅膀和奇异的羽毛。在他生日时，她甚至送了他一块一平方厘米大小的圣佩德罗·克拉维尔[6]曾经穿过的教士服上的布料，那是那个时期人们私下买卖的，对于她这个年龄的学生来说，绝对是个不小的数目。一天晚上，在毫无征兆的情况下，费尔明娜·达萨被一首小提琴独奏的小夜曲惊醒，曲中不断重复着一段华尔兹的弦律。她颤抖了，因为她听得分明，每一个音符都表达出感激之情，感激她送的花瓣，感激她占用算术课的时间给他写信，感激她因想他胜过了关心自然科学而造成对考试的恐惧。但她还是不敢相信弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨竟会做出如此莽撞的事来。（注：[6] 圣佩德罗·克拉维尔（1580—1654），西班牙天主教耶稣会传教士，曾在哥伦比亚的黑奴中传教。）
The next morning at breakfast Lorenzo Daza could not contain his curiosity — first because he did not know what playing a single piece meant in the language of serenades, and second because, despite the attention with which he had listened, he could not determine which house it had been intended for. Aunt Escolástica, with a sangfroid that took her niece’s breath away, stated that she had seen through the bedroom curtains that the solitary violinist was standing on the other side of the park, and she said that in any event a single piece was notification of severed relations. In that day’s letter Florentino Ariza confirmed that he had played the serenade, that he had composed the waltz, and that it bore the name he called Fermina Daza in his heart: “The Crowned Goddess.” He did not play it in the park again, but on moonlit nights in places chosen so that she could listen without fear in her bedroom. One of his favored spots was the paupers” cemetery, exposed to the sun and the rain on an indigent hill, where turkey buzzards dozed and the music achieved a supernatural resonance. Later he learned to recognize the direction of the winds, and in this way he was certain that his melody carried as far as it had to.
第二天早上吃早餐时，洛伦索·达萨抑制不住自己的好奇心。一是他不知道在小夜曲的语言中，反复演奏同一段弦律有何深意，二是虽然他听得专注，但还是不知道乐曲是为哪户人家而奏。埃斯科拉斯蒂卡姑妈的冷静让侄女恢复了心神。她肯定地说自己透过卧室的纱帘看到那个孤独的小提琴手坐在花园的另一边，还说不管怎样，单曲重复代表的是决裂。在当天的信中，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨证实了自己就是献上小夜曲的人，那曲华尔兹是他自己写的，曲名代表着费尔明娜·达萨在他心目中的形象：花冠女神。他再也没有在花园中拉过小提琴，但常常会在有月亮的夜晚，精心选择合适的地方献上一曲，既让她在卧室里就能听到，又不必再提心吊胆。他最喜欢的地方之一就是贫民墓地。它坐落在一座贫瘠的小山上，整日经受着日晒雨淋，很多秃鹫栖息在那里。从那里奏出的音乐有一种空灵的回声。后来，他还学会了分辨风向，以确定他的乐声能到达它应该到的地方。
For three nights he slept with irons around his ankles in the cells of the local garrison. But when he was released he felt defrauded by the brevity of his captivity, and even in the days of his old age, when so many other wars were confused in his memory, he still thought he was the only man in the city, and perhaps the country, who had dragged five-pound leg irons for the sake of love.
他被带上脚镣，在当地警备队的牢房里睡了三个晚上。但当他被释放时，却为囚禁的时间太短而感到沮丧。甚至在上了年纪以后，那一次又一次的战争早已在他的记忆中混淆，他却仍旧在想，他是这个城市，或许是整个国家中唯一一个因爱情而戴上五磅重的镣铐的人。
“What the hell do you mean, a spy?” said Florentino Ariza. “I’m nothing but a poor lover.”
“什么间谍？什么乌七八糟的玩意儿？”弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨说，“我不过是个可怜的恋人。”
In August of that year a new civil war, one of the many that had been devastating the country for over half a century, threatened to spread, and the government imposed martial law and a six o’clock curfew in the provinces along the Caribbean coast. Although some disturbances had already occurred, and the troops had committed all kinds of retaliatory abuses, Florentino Ariza was so befuddled that he was unaware of the state of the world, and a military patrol surprised him one dawn as he disturbed the chastity of the dead with his amorous provocations. By some miracle he escaped summary execution after he was accused of being a spy who sent messages in the key of G to the Liberal ships marauding in nearby waters.
那年八月，一场新的内战即将再次危及全国。半个世纪以来，一场接一场的战争不断蹂躏着这个国家。政府施行军事管制，在加勒比沿岸的几个州从下午六点起开始宵禁。虽然已经发生过几次骚乱，军队多次滥用暴行，可弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨仍然迷迷糊糊，对世界的状况一无所知。一天清晨，他正在用他那爱情的呼唤扰乱亡者的宁静时，一支军事巡逻队逮捕了他。他被指控为间谍，以高音谱号的形式向在附近水域游弋的自由党船舰发送暗号，但他奇迹般地逃过一劫，没有被当场处决。
Their frenetic correspondence was almost two years old when Florentino Ariza, in a letter of only one paragraph, made a formal proposal of marriage to Fermina Daza. On several occasions during the preceding six months he had sent her a white camellia, but she would return it to him in her next letter so that he would have no doubt that she was disposed to continue writing to him, but without the seriousness of an engagement. The truth is that she had always taken the comings and goings of the camellia as a lovers” game, and it had never occurred to her to consider it as a crossroads in her destiny. But when the formal proposal arrived she felt herself wounded for the first time by the clawings of death. Panic-stricken, she told her Aunt Escolástica, who gave her advice with the courage and lucidity she had not had when she was twenty and was forced to decide her own fate.
狂热的通信即将满两年时，在一封只有一段话的信中，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨向费尔明娜·达萨正式求婚了。之前的六个月里，他曾给她寄过好几次白色山茶花，但她都在下一封信中还给了他，为的是既让他不要怀疑她愿意继续给他写信，又不愿背上承诺的重负。事实上，她一直把山茶花的一来一回当作一种调情，而从未视之为决定自己命运的十字路口。但当接到正式求婚的那一刻，她感觉自己仿佛第一次被死神抓伤了。她大惊失色，把这件事告诉了埃斯科拉斯蒂卡姑妈。姑妈勇敢而睿智地担起了为侄女答疑解惑的责任，这两种品质是当初二十岁的她被迫决定自己命运时所不曾具有的。
“Tell him yes,” she said. “Even if you are dying of fear, even if you are sorry later, because whatever you do, you will be sorry all the rest of your life if you say no.”
“回答他说你愿意。”她对侄女说，“即便你害怕得要死，即便你以后可能后悔。因为如果你说不，无论如何你都会后悔一辈子。”
Fermina Daza, however, was so confused that she asked for some time to think it over. First she asked for a month, then two, then three, and when the fourth month had ended and she had still not replied, she received a white camellia again, not alone in the envelope as on other occasions but with the peremptory notification that this was the last one: it was now or never. Then that same afternoon it was Florentino Ariza who saw the face of death when he received an envelope containing a strip of paper, torn from the margin of a school notebook, on which a one-line answer was written in pencil: Very well, I will marry you if you promise not to make me eat eggplant.
然而，费尔明娜·达萨是那么茫然，她请求给她一段时间考虑。先是要求一个月，而后又是一个月，接着再是一个月。四个月过去了，她依旧没有回复，这时她再一次收到了白色山茶花。和前几次不同，这次信封中装着的不只是山茶花，还有一份最后通牒：要么现在，要么永远都不。这一次，换作是弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨看到了死神的面孔，因为当天下午，他收到一个信封，里面是一张从学校练习本的边缘撕下来的纸条，上面只有一行用铅笔写的回答：好吧，我同意结婚，只要您保证不逼我吃茄子。
Florentino Ariza was not prepared for that answer, but his mother was. Since he had first spoken to her six months earlier about his intention to marry, Tránsito Ariza had begun negotiations for renting the entire house which, until that time, she had shared with two other families. A two-story structure dating from the seventeenth century, it was the building where the tobacco monopoly had been located under Spanish rule, and its ruined owners had been obliged to rent it out in bits and pieces because they did not have the money to maintain it. It had one section facing the street, where the retail tobacco shop had been, another section at the rear of a paved patio, where the factory had been located, and a very large stable that the current tenants used in common for washing and drying their clothes. Tránsito Ariza occupied the first section, which was the most convenient and the best preserved, although it was also the smallest. The notions store was in the old tobacco shop, with a large door facing the street, and to one side was the former storeroom, with only a skylight for ventilation, where Tránsito Ariza slept. The stockroom took up half the space that was divided by a wooden partition. In it were a table and four chairs, used for both eating and writing, and it was there that Florentino Ariza hung his hammock when dawn did not find him writing. It was a good space for the two of them, but too small for a third person, least of all a young lady from the Academy of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin whose father had restored a house in ruins until it was like new, while the families with seven titles went to bed with the fear that the roofs of their mansions would cave in on them while they slept. So Tránsito Ariza had arranged with the owner to let her also occupy the gallery in the patio, and in exchange she would keep the house in good condition for five years.
这个回答令弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨措手不及，但他的母亲却早有准备。自从他六个月前第一次说起结婚的打算，特兰西多·阿里萨就开始着手张罗，把之前一直和两家人合租的房子整幢承租下来。这是一座十七世纪的民用建筑，上下两层，曾是西班牙人治下的烟草专卖商店。它的所有者破产后，无力维持房子的日常开销，只好将它分成几小块空间租出去。房子的一部分临街，是曾经的店面所在；另一部分位于地上铺着方砖的院子深处，是原来的厂房所在；另外还有一个很大的马厩，如今被房客共用来洗晒衣服。特兰西多·阿里萨租的是临街部分，虽然是最小的，却也是整幢房子中最有用且保持得最好的部分。昔日烟草店大厅的位置正是现在的杂货铺，有一扇临街的大门，旁边那间只靠一扇天窗通风的古老库房是特兰西多·阿里萨睡觉的地方。店铺里间是原大厅的一半，是用一道木隔扇隔出来的，那里有一张桌子和四把椅子，既是餐桌又是写字台。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨如果不写信写到天亮，就会在那里支起一张吊床。对两个人来说，这个空间还不错，但再多一个就有些不够了，特别是对一个就读于至圣童贞奉献日学校的小姐来说。而且，这位小姐的父亲还曾把一座瓦砾中的房子修缮一新，要知道，当时一些头顶七个姓氏的家族，睡觉时都要提心吊胆，生怕房顶塌下来压到他们身上。于是，特兰西多·阿里萨征得房东的同意，占用了院子的走廊，条件是五年内保持房子处于良好状态。
She had the resources to do so. In addition to the cash income from the notions store and the hemostatic rags, which sufficed for her modest life, she had multiplied her savings by lending them to a clientele made up of the embarrassed new poor, who accepted her excessive interest rates for the sake of her discretion. Ladies with the airs of queens descended from their carriages at the entrance to the notions shop, unencumbered by nursemaids or servants, and as they pretended to buy Holland laces and passementerie trimmings, they pawned, between sobs, the last glittering ornaments of their lost paradise. Tránsito Ariza rescued them from difficulties with so much consideration for their lineage that many of them left more grateful for the honor than for the favor they had received. In less than ten years she knew the jewels, so often redeemed and then tearfully pawned again, as if they had been her own, and at the time her son decided to marry, the profits, converted into gold, lay hidden in a clay jar under her bed. Then she did her accounts and discovered not only that she could undertake to keep the rented house standing for five years, but that with the same shrewdness and a little more luck she could perhaps buy it, before she died, for the twelve grandchildren she hoped to have. Florentino Ariza, for his part, had received provisional appointment as First Assistant at the telegraph office, and Lotario Thugut wanted him to head the office when he left to direct the School of Telegraphy and Magnetism, which he expected to do the following year.
她有资本这样做。杂货铺和拆旧衣做止血药棉所带来的殷实收入已足够维持她节俭的生活，此外，她还把自己的积蓄借给那些新沦落为穷人却爱面子的主顾们。他们为感激她口风严密而愿意接受高额利息，特兰西多·阿里萨借此让积蓄翻了好几翻。在杂货铺门前，那些夫人们像王后一般雍容华贵地从华丽的四轮马车上走下来，身边并不带着碍手碍脚的奶妈和仆人。她们装作来买荷兰的花边和金银绦子的边饰，然后一边抽泣几声，一边把自己那失落的天堂中最后的几件仿金首饰典当掉。特兰西多·阿里萨为她们排忧解难的同时，对她们的家世仍毕恭毕敬，以至于很多人临走时更多地是感激她的尊重而非帮助。不到十年时间，她对那些几次赎回又几次含泪典当的首饰已经熟悉得如同自家的东西一样了。当儿子决定结婚时，她的收益早已变成法定标准的黄金，埋在床下的一只罐子里。她盘算了一下，发现这笔钱不仅够她把别人的这座房子维持五年，而且靠着她的小聪明和再多一点好运气，或许还能在死前把整座房子买下来，留给她满心期盼的十二个孙子孙女。而弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨也已被任命为电报室的临时第一助理，如果洛达里奥·图古特能到来年即将成立的电报磁力学校去当校长，他希望弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨留下来当电报室的头儿。
“We’ll grow old waiting,” he said.
“我们会等老的。”他说。
So the practical side of the marriage was resolved. Still, Tránsito Ariza thought that two final conditions were prudent. The first was to find out who Lorenzo Daza really was, for though his accent left no doubt concerning his origins, no one had any certain information as to his identity and livelihood. The second was that the engagement be a long one so that the fiancés could come to know each other person to person, and that the strictest reserve be maintained until both felt very certain of their affections. She suggested they wait until the war was over. Florentino Ariza agreed to absolute secrecy, not only for his mother’s reasons but because of the hermeticism of his own character. He also agreed to the delay, but its terms seemed unrealistic to him, since in over half a centur y of independent life the nation had not had a single day of civil peace.
因此，结婚的物质基础已经具备。但特兰西多·阿里萨认为慎重起见，还有两个条件需要考虑。第一，要调查一下洛伦索·达萨到底是个什么样的人，他的口音无疑表明了他来自哪里，但他的身份、他谋生的手段却没有人准确知道。第二，这对恋人的恋爱期应当更长一些，这样才能让两人通过亲身交往彼此更加了解；同时，他们要对此段恋情严格保密，直到已经非常确定自己的感情。她建议他们等到战争结束再结婚。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨同意绝对保密，因为母亲说得很有道理，也因为他自己向来不愿多言的性格。另外，他也同意延长恋爱时间，但他认为要等到战争结束再结婚是不现实的，因为独立后的大半个世纪以来，国家没有一天是太平的。
His godfather, the homeopathic practitioner, who happened to be taking part in the conversation, did not believe that the wars were an obstacle. He thought they were nothing more than the struggles of the poor, driven like oxen by the landowners, against barefoot soldiers who were driven in turn by the government.
他那位精通顺势疗法的教父偶然加入了他们的谈话，他并不认为战争是什么障碍。在他看来，那不过是被领主像赶牛一般驱使的穷人跟被政府驱使的赤脚的士兵在打架罢了。
Florentino Ariza’s life had changed. Requited love had given him a confidence and strength he had never known before, and he was so efficient in his work that Lotario Thugut had no trouble having him named his permanent assistant. By that time his plans for the School of Telegraphy and Magnetism had failed, and the German dedicated his free time to the only thing he really enjoyed: going to the port to play the accordion and drink beer with the sailors, finishing the evening at the transient hotel. It was a long time before Florentino Ariza, realized that Lotario Thugut’s influence in the palace of pleasure was due to the fact that he had become the owner of the establishment as well as impresario for the birds in the port. He had bought it gradually with his savings of many years, but the person who ran it for him was a lean, one-eyed little man with a polished head and a heart so kind that no one understood how he could be such a good manager. But he was. At least it seemed that way to Florentino Ariza when the manager told him, without his requesting it, that he had the permanent use of a room in the hotel, not only to resolve problems of the lower belly whenever he decided to do so, but so that he could have at his disposal a quiet place for his reading and his love letters. And as the long months passed until the formalizing of the engagement, he spent more time there than at the office or his house, and there were periods when Tránsito Ariza saw him only when he came home to change his clothes.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的生活变了。得到回报的爱情给予了他前所未有的安全感和力量。他在工作中表现出色，洛达里奥·图古特没费吹灰之力就使他被任命为自己的终身助手。那时，电报磁力学校的计划失败了，于是，这个德国人把全部空闲时间都献给了他唯一真正喜欢的事情，即到港口去和水手们一起拉手风琴、喝啤酒，最后再到小旅馆过上一夜。又过了许多时候，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨才发现，洛达里奥·图古特在那个欢愉场所有很大的影响力，是因为他已经变成那栋建筑的主人，而且还成了那些港口夜鸟的老板。他用自己多年的积蓄把那里一点一点买了下来，但替他出头露面的是一个又瘦又小、头发像刷子一样的独眼人：这个人心地善良、性格温顺，谁也想不到他会是一位出色的经理。但事实的确如此。至少，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨是这样认为的，因为这位经理在他没有要求的情况下，告诉他说他在这里长期拥有一个房间，不仅可以供他在确定有需要时解决下半身的问题，还可以供他安静地阅读和写情书。因此，在等待正式订婚之前的一个个漫长的月份里，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨在这里度过的时光比在办公室和家里都多。有那么一段时间，特兰西多·阿里萨只有在他回家换衣服时才能见到他。
“The war is in the mountains,” he said. “For as long as I can remember, they have killed us in the cities with decrees, not with bullets.”
“仗是在山上打的。”他说，“自打我生下来，在城里杀我们的就从来不是子弹，而是法令。”
In any case, the details of the engagement were settled in their letters during the weeks that followed. Fermina Daza, on the advice of her Aunt Escolástica, accepted both the two-year extension and the condition of absolute secrecy, and suggested that Florentino Ariza ask for her hand when she finished secondary school, during the Christmas vacation. When the time came they would decide on how the engagement was to be formalized, depending on the degree of approval she obtained from her father. In the meantime, they continued to write to each other with the same ardor and frequency, but free of the turmoil they had felt before, and their letters tended toward a domestic tone that seemed appropriate to husband and wife. Nothing disturbed their dreams.
不管怎样，结婚的细节问题在接下来这个星期的信中得以商定。费尔明娜·达萨接受埃斯科拉斯蒂卡姑妈的忠告，同意以两年为期，保持绝对贞洁，并建议弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨在她完成中学学业的圣诞节假期里向她求婚。届时她将征得父亲的同意，两人可以根据她父亲赞同的程度，决定如何正式订婚。与此同时，他们以一如既往的热情和之前一样频繁通信，但再不像以前那样动不动就担惊受怕，信中的口吻慢慢变得如同夫妻之间。已经没有什么会扰乱他们的梦想。
Reading had become his insatiable vice. Ever since she had taught him to read, his mother had bought him illustrated books by Nordic authors which were sold as stories for children but in reality were the crudest and most perverse that one could read at any age. When he was five years old, Florentino Ariza would recite them from memory, both in his classes and at literary evenings at school, but his familiarity with them did not alleviate the terror they caused. On the contrary, it became acute. So that when he began to read poetry, by comparison it was like finding an oasis. Even during his adolescence he had devoured, in the order of their appearance, all the volumes of the Popular Library that Tránsito Ariza bought from the bargain booksellers at the Arcade of the Scribes, where one could find everything from Homer to the least meritorious of the local poets. But he made no distinctions: he read whatever came his way, as if it had been ordained by fate, and despite his many years of reading, he still could not judge what was good and what was not in all that he had read. The only thing clear to him was that he preferred verse to prose, and in verse he preferred love poems that he memorized without even intending to after the second reading, and the better rhymed and metered they were, and the more heartrending, the more easily he learned them.
阅读是他永远无法得到满足的一项嗜好。自从教会他认字，母亲便给他买来很多北欧作家写的配有插图的书。它们是作为故事书卖给孩子们看的，但其实里边都是些极其残忍、邪恶的故事，各个年龄段的人都可以看。五岁时，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨就能在课堂上或学校的晚会上背诵它们。但对它们的熟悉并没有减少他的恐惧。相反，是更加重了。因此，转向诗歌对他来说是一种心灵上的舒缓。青春期伊始，他就按到手顺序读完了“人民图书馆”的所有诗集。那些书是特兰西多·阿里萨从“代笔人门廊”的二手书商那里买来的，从荷马史诗到当地诗人最名不见经传的作品，应有尽有。但他没有区别对待，而是哪本来了，就读哪本，仿佛命中注定一般。他阅读的年头还不足以让他在自己读过的众多图书中分辨出好坏。他唯一清楚的，便是在散文和诗歌中，他更喜欢诗歌，而在诗歌中，他又更喜欢爱情诗。凡爱情诗他每读到第二遍，就能不知不觉地背诵下来，越是讲究格律和用韵，越让人撕心裂肺的诗，他背得越容易。
They were the original source of his first letters to Fermina Daza, those half-baked endearments taken whole from the Spanish romantics, and his letters continued in that vein until real life obliged him to concern himself with matters more mundane than heartache. By that time he had moved on to tearful serialized novels and other, even more profane prose of the day. He had learned to cry with his mother as they read the pamphlets by local poets that were sold in plazas and arcades for two centavos each. But at the same time he was able to recite from memory the most exquisite Castilian poetry of the Golden Age. In general, he read everything that fell into his hands in the order in which it fell, so that long after those hard years of his first love, when he was no longer young, he would read from first page to last the twenty volumes of the Young People’s Treasury, the complete catalogue of the Gamier Bros. Classics in translation, and the simplest works that Don Vicente Blasco Ibáñez published in the Prometeo collection.
这就是他写给费尔明娜·达萨最初几封信的源泉。在那些信中，他曾整段照搬西班牙浪漫主义作家的诗篇，而直到现实迫使他更加关注尘世琐事而非心灵的苦痛，他才朝着当时那些催人泪下的连载小说和一些更为世俗的散文作品靠拢了一步。他学会了跟母亲一起一边落泪一边朗读当地诗人的作品，这些诗作在广场和各个城门口花两个生太伏就可以买上一册。但同时，他也会背诵黄金世纪最经典的卡斯蒂利亚语诗歌。总之，他严格按照到手顺序阅读一切能够到手的书籍。甚至在他那初恋的艰难岁月过去很久之后，他早已不再年轻，却还会把二十卷《青年宝库》、全套翻译过来的加尔涅尔·诺斯社的经典著作，以及维森特·布拉斯科·伊巴涅斯收在普罗米修斯文丛中的较为简单的作品，从第一页读到最后一页。
In any event, his youthful adventures in the transient hotel were not limited to reading and composing feverish letters but also included his initiation into the secrets of loveless love. Life in the house began after noon, when his friends the birds got up as bare as the day they were born, so that when Florentino Ariza arrived after work he found a palace populated by naked nymphs who shouted their commentaries on the secrets of the city, which they knew because of the faithlessness of the protagonists. Many displayed in their nudity traces of their past: scars of knife thrusts in the belly, starbursts of guns hot wounds, ridges of the razor cuts of love, Caesarean sections sewn up by butchers. Some of them had their young children with them during the day, those unfortunate fruits of youthful defiance or carelessness, and they took off their children’s clothes as soon as they were brought in so they would not feel different in that paradise of nudity. Each one cooked her own food, and no one ate better than Florentino Ariza when they invited him for a meal, because he chose the best from each. It was a daily fiesta that lasted until dusk, when the naked women marched, singing, toward the bathrooms, asked to borrow soap, toothbrushes, scissors, cut each other’s hair, dressed in borrowed clothes, painted themselves like lugubrious clowns, and went out to hunt the first prey of the night. Then life in the house became impersonal and dehumanized, and it was impossible to share in it without paying.
但不管怎样，他在那所小旅馆中度过的青年时光并非仅限于阅读和书写炽热的情书，还初识了那种没有爱情的爱的秘密。中午过后，旅馆里生机勃勃起来，他的那些夜鸟朋友如降生时一般赤裸着身子起床了。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨下班回来，会看到一座到处都是光着身子的仙女的宫殿。她们大声地谈论着当事人向他们透露的这座城市里的秘密。其中很多人的裸体上展示着岁月留下的痕迹：小腹上的刀疤，子弹留下的疤痕，爱情留下的刀痕，以及剖腹产后惨不忍睹的缝合痕迹。有些人白天会把最小的孩子带在身边，这些孩子是她们年轻时叛逆或失足带来的不幸果实。孩子刚一进来，她们就把他们的衣服脱光，以免他们在这个裸体的天堂里感到与众不同。她们各烧各的饭，所以没有人比弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨吃得更好，因为她们邀请他时，他总是从每个人那里挑最好的吃。每天都像过节，直到黄昏。那时，她们便光着身子，唱着歌，排着队去盥洗室梳洗。她们互相借香皂，借牙膏，借剪刀，互剪头发，互相换衣服穿，再把自己的脸化得跟可怜的小丑似的，出门去捕捉当晚的第一批猎物。从这时起，旅馆里的生活就变得没有人格、无情无义了，没有钱就休想参与其中。
Since he had known Fermina Daza, there was no place where Florentino Ariza felt more at ease, because it was the only place where he felt that he was with her. Perhaps it was for similar reasons that an elegant older woman with beautiful silvery hair lived there but did not participate in the uninhibited life of the naked women, who professed sacramental respect for her. A premature sweetheart had taken her there when she was young, and after enjoying her for a time, abandoned her to her fate. Nevertheless, despite the stigma, she had made a good marriage. When she was quite old and alone, two sons and three daughters argued over who would have the pleasure of taking her to live with them, but she could not think of a better place to live than that hotel of her youthful debaucheries. Her permanent room was her only home, and this made for immediate communion with Florentino Ariza, who, she said, would become a wise man known throughout the world because he could enrich his soul with reading in a paradise of salaciousness. Florentino Ariza, for his part, developed so much affection for her that he helped her with her shopping and would spend the afternoons in conversation with her. He thought she was a woman wise in the ways of love, since she offered many insights into his affair without his having to reveal any secrets to her.
自从认识费尔明娜·达萨以来，没有什么地方比这里更让弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨感到自在了，因为这儿是唯一不让他觉得孤独的地方。甚至可以说，这里最终成了唯一能让他感到仿佛和她待在一起的地方。或许是出于同样的原因，一位上了年纪、举止优雅、有着一头漂亮银发的妇人也住在这旅馆里。她从不参与裸体女人们的日常生活，她们对她则怀有一种神圣的敬意。她年轻时，一位少不更事的恋人把她带到这里，享用了一段时间后抛弃了她，任她自生自灭。不过，虽然带着这个污点，她还是嫁得不错。成为寡妇时，她已经年纪一大把了。两个儿子和三个女儿都争相让她和自己一起生活，可她却想不出有什么地方比自己年轻时曾在此放荡过的这个旅馆更合适了。她在这里的房间是她唯一的家，这让她立刻在弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨身上找到了共鸣。她说弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨有朝一日会成为闻名世界的学者，因为他可以在淫荡的天堂里用阅读来丰富自己的灵魂。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨也很喜欢她，常帮她去市场买东西，而且经常和她一聊就是一下午。他觉得她在爱情方面是个智者，因为尽管他没有向她透露自己的秘密，她却已经多次为他的爱情指点迷津。
If he had not given in to the many temptations at hand before he experienced Fermina Daza’s love, he certainly would not succumb now that she was his official betrothed. So Florentino Ariza lived with the girls and shared their pleasures and miseries, but it did not occur to him or them to go any further. An unforeseen event demonstrated the severity of his determination. One afternoon at six o’clock, when the girls were dressing to receive that evening’s clients, the woman who cleaned the rooms on his floor in the hotel came into his cubicle. She was young, but haggard and old before her time, like a fully dressed penitent surrounded by glorious nakedness. He saw her every day without feeling himself observed: she walked through the rooms with her brooms, a bucket for the trash, and a special rag for picking up used condoms from the floor. She came into the room where Florentino Ariza lay reading, and as always she cleaned with great care so as not to disturb him. Then she passed close to the bed, and he felt a warm and tender hand low on his belly, he felt it searching, he felt it finding, he felt it unbuttoning his trousers while her breathing filled the room. He pretended to read until he could not bear it any longer and had to move his body out of the way.
如果说在爱上费尔明娜·达萨以前，他都不曾陷入那么多唾手可得的诱惑之中，那么如今费尔明娜·达萨已成为他的正式恋人，他就更不可能如此了。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨同那些姑娘们共同生活在旅馆里，分享她们的喜悦和愁苦，但无论他还是她们，都没有想过要越雷池一步。一次意外事件证明了他的决心之坚定。一天下午六点，就在姑娘们穿衣准备接待晚间客人的时候，旅馆中负责清洁的女孩走进了他的房间。她是一个年轻姑娘，但看上去衰老而憔悴，在那些裸体女人的光芒之中，就像一个穿着忏悔服的罪人。他每天都能看见她，但从没感觉到她也注意到了自己：她走过每个房间，手里拿着几把扫帚，一只装垃圾的桶，还有一块专门用来从地上捡起用过的避孕套的抹布。她走进房间，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨正像往常一样在读书。而她也像平时一样小心翼翼地扫着地，以免打扰他。突然，她朝床边走过来。他感到她那只温热而柔软的手放在了自己的小腹上，在寻找着什么，接着它找到了，便开始解他的扣子，同时，她的呼吸声充满了整个房间。他装作读书的样子，直到再也装不下去，只好挪开身子。
She was dismayed, for the first thing they warned her about when they gave her the cleaning job was that she should not try to sleep with the clients. They did not have to tell her that, because she was one of those women who thought that prostitution did not mean going to bed for money but going to bed with a stranger. She had two children, each by a different father, not because they were casual adventures but because she could never love any man who came back after the third visit. Until that time she had been a woman without a sense of urgency, a woman whose nature prepared her to wait without despair, but life in that house proved stronger than her virtue. She came to work at six in the afternoon, and she spent the whole night going through the rooms, sweeping them out, picking up condoms, changing the sheets. It was difficult to imagine the number of things that men left after love. They left vomit and tears, which seemed understandable to her, but they also left many enigmas of intimacy: puddles of blood, patches of excrement, glass eyes, go ld watches, false teeth, lockets with golden curls, love letters, business letters, condolence letters — all kinds of letters. Some came back for the items they had lost, but most were unclaimed, and Lotario Thugut kept them under lock and key and thought that sooner or later the palace that had seen better days, with its thousands of forgotten belongings, would become a museum of love.
她害怕了，因为当初他们给她这份清洁工作时提出的第一个警告就是不能跟客人上床。其实，他们没有必要对她说这个，因为她属于那样一类女人，认为当妓女不是为了钱，而是为了跟陌生人上床。她有两个儿子，是和不同的男人生的，并非因为她生性水性杨花，而是因为她从来没能爱上一个来了三次以后再来的男人。在来这里之前，她并不是一个在那方面有急迫需要的女人。她生性平和，始终耐心等待，并没有绝望。然而，旅馆中的生活比她的美德更强大。她每天下午六点来这里上班，整晚都在房间之间穿梭，用四把扫帚清扫房间，捡避孕套，换床单。很难想象，男人们在爱情过后会留下那么多东西。呕吐物和眼泪是她可以理解的，但他们还留下了各种隐私的谜团：血污、排泄物、玻璃眼球、金表、假牙、藏着一缕金发的遗物盒、情书、商务信函和吊唁信等各种信件。有些人会回来寻找他们丢失的东西，但绝大部分物品都会被遗忘在这里。洛达里奥·图古特把它们锁起来保存好，认为就算有一天这座宫殿不幸衰落，单靠这数千件被遗忘的私人物品，它也早晚能成为一座爱情博物馆。
The work was hard and the pay was low, but she did it well. What she could not endure were the sobs, the laments, the creaking of the bedsprings, which filled her blood with so much ardor and so much sorrow that by dawn she could not bear the desire to go to bed with the first beggar she met on the street, with any miserable drunk who would give her what she wanted with no pretensions and no questions. The appearance of a man like Florentino Ariza, young, clean, and without a woman, was for her a gift from heaven, because from the first moment she realized that he was just like her: someone in need of love. But he was unaware of her compelling desire. He had kept his virginity for Fermina Daza, and there was no force or argument in this world that could turn him from his purpose.
她的工作艰苦，酬劳很低，但她做得很好。她不能忍受的是床第之间的抽泣和呻吟，还有床下弹簧嘎吱作响的声音。这一切在她的血液中沉淀堆积，令她热血沸腾，痛苦不堪，天亮时恨不得跟大街上碰到的第一个乞丐睡上一觉，或者不求其他、不问究竟地找个烂醉如泥的酒鬼助她完成心愿。像弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨这样一个身边没有女人、年轻而又干净的小伙子出现，对她来说简直是上天的恩赐，因为从第一眼看见他的那一刻起，她就发现他和自己一样，迫切需要爱情的抚慰。但他却对她的急切渴望毫无察觉。他一直为费尔明娜·达萨保持着童贞，这世界上没有任何力量和理由能改变他的决心。
That was his life, four months before the date set for formalizing the engagement, when Lorenzo Daza showed up at the telegraph office one morning at seven o’clock and asked for him. Since he had not yet arrived, Lorenzo Daza waited on the bench until ten minutes after eight, slipping a heavy gold ring with its noble opal stone from one finger to another, and as soon as Florentino Ariza came in, he recognized him as the employee who had delivered the telegram, and he took him by the arm.
这就是他在两人约好的正式订婚时间的四个月前所过的生活。可就在这个时候，一天早上七点，洛伦索·达萨突然出现在电报室里，点名要见他。当时他还没到，洛伦索·达萨就坐在长凳上等，一直等到八点十分，不停地把他那只镶嵌着名贵蛋白石的沉甸甸的金戒指从一根手指摘下，又戴到另一根手指上。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨走进来时，他立刻就认出了这个曾给他送过电报的小伙子，一把将他拉了过去。
“Come with me, my boy,” he said. “You and I have to talk for five minutes, man to man.”
“年轻人，跟我来。”他对他说，“我们聊五分钟，这是男人和男人之间的对话。”
Florentino Ariza, as green as a corpse, let himself be led. He was not prepared for this meeting, because Fermina Daza had not found either the occasion or the means to warn him. The fact was that on the previous Saturday, Sister Franca de la Luz, Superior of the Academy of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin, had come into the class on Ideas of Cosmogony with the stealth of a serpent, and spying on the students over their shoulders, she discovered that Fermina Daza was pretending to take notes in her notebook when in reality she was writing a love letter. According to the rules of the Academy, that error was reason for expulsion. Lorenzo Daza received an urgent summons to the rectory, where he discovered the leak through which his iron regime was trickling. Fermina Daza, with her innate fortitude, confessed to the error of the letter, but refused to reveal the identity of her secret sweetheart and refused again before the Tribunal of the Order which, therefore, confirmed the verdict of expulsion. Her father, however, searched her room, until then an inviolate sanctuary, and in the false bottom of her trunk he found the packets of three years” worth of letters hidden away with as much love as had inspired their writing. The signature was unequivocal, but Lorenzo Daza could not believe — not then, not ever — that his daughter knew nothing about her secret lover except that he worked as a telegraph operator and that he loved the violin.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的脸乌青得像死人一般，跟着他去了。对这次会面，他毫无准备，因为费尔明娜·达萨根本没有机会也没有办法提前告诉他。事情是这样的：上星期六，至圣童贞奉献日学校的校长弗兰卡·德拉路斯修女像蛇一样悄无声息地溜进了“世界之本源”课的课堂，从各位女学生的肩膀上方窥探她们，正好抓到费尔明娜·达萨假装在本子上做笔记，实则是在写情书。根据学校的规定，犯了这种错误的人要被开除。洛伦索·达萨被紧急叫到校长办公室，由此发现自己铁一般的家规出了疏漏，瓦解在即。费尔明娜·达萨带着她骨子里的倔强承认了自己写信的错误，但拒绝说出这位秘密恋人的身份。由于她在教会法庭上再次拒绝说出恋人是谁，法庭批准了将她开除的处罚决定。父亲对她的房间进行了搜查，而在此之前，那里一直被视作不可侵犯的圣地。他在一只箱子的夹层里找到了三年来累积的一摞摞信件，显然，它们用爱写成，同样也被用爱收藏着。信上的签名确凿无疑，但洛伦索·达萨当时及以后永远都无法相信，女儿对她这位秘密恋人的了解仅仅限于他是个电报员和他喜欢拉小提琴，再无其他。
Certain that such an intricate relationship was understandable only with the complicity of his sister, he did not grant her the grace of an excuse or the right of appeal, but shipped her on the schooner to San Juan de la Ciénaga. Fermina Daza never found relief from her last memory of her aunt on the afternoon when she said goodbye in the doorway, burning with fever inside her brown habit, bony and ashen, and then disappeared into the drizzle in the little park, carrying all that she owned in life: her spinster’s sleeping mat and enough money for a month, wrapped in a handkerchief that she clutched in her fist. As soon as she had freed herself from her father’s authority, Fermina Daza began a search for her in the Caribbean provinces, asking for information from everyone who might know her, and she could not find a trace of her until almost thirty years later when she received a letter that had taken a long time to pass through many hands, informing her that she had died in the Water of God leprosarium. Lorenzo Daza did not foresee the ferocity with which his daughter would react to the unjust punishment of her Aunt Escolástica, whom she had always identified with the mother she could barely remember. She locked herself in her room, refused to eat or drink, and when at last he persuaded her to open the door, first with threats and then with poorly dissimulated pleading, he found a wounded panther who would never be fifteen years old again.
他确信只有在自己妹妹的同谋下，两人才有可能维持这种艰难的联系。于是，他甚至都没有给妹妹解释的机会，便把她塞上了开往圣胡安·德拉希耶纳加的轻便船。费尔明娜·达萨永远也忘不了那天下午，发着高烧的姑妈在门廊上向自己告别的情景。姑妈穿着她那件褐色修士服，脸色苍白而憔悴。她看着姑妈消失在小花园的蒙蒙细雨中，手里拿着生活中仅剩的东西：一包单身女人的铺盖和只够用一个月的钱。钱被她用手绢包着，攥在手中。后来，费尔明娜·达萨一从父亲的淫威下解脱出来，就派人到加勒比各省四处去寻找她，向一切可能认识她的人打听消息，但一直没有任何音讯。直到三十年后，她才收到一封经多人之手费了很长时间辗转到她手中的信，信上说她的姑妈已经在“上帝之水”麻风病院去世了。洛伦索·达萨没有想到自己这次不公的惩罚会造成女儿如此强烈的反应，他让姑妈成了牺牲品，而女儿因对母亲的记忆所剩无几，一直是把姑妈视为母亲的。她将自己锁在卧室里，不吃不喝。洛伦索·达萨先是威胁，然后用蹩脚掩饰的恳求。当她终于把房门打开，他看到的不再是曾经的那个十五岁少女，而是一个受了伤的坚强女人。
Florentino Ariza still had not recovered when Lorenzo Daza held him by the arm and steered him across the Plaza of the Cathedral to the arcaded gallery of the Parish Café and invited him to sit on the terrace. There were no other customers at that hour: a black woman was scrubbing the tiles in the enormous salon with its chipped and dusty stained-glass windows, and the chairs were still upside down on the marble tables. Florentino Ariza had often seen Lorenzo Daza gambling and drinking cask wine there with the Asturians from the public market, while they shouted and argued about other long-standing wars that had nothing to do with our own. Conscious of the fatality of love, he had often wondered how the meeting would be that he was bound to have with Lorenzo Daza sooner or later, the meeting that no human power could forestall because it had been inscribed in both their destinies forever. He had supposed it would be an unequal dispute, not only because Fermina Daza had warned him in her letters of her father’s stormy character, but because he himself had noted that his eyes seemed angry even when he was laughing at the gaming table. Everything about him was a testimony to crudeness: his ignoble belly, his emphatic speech, his lynx’s side-whiskers, his rough hands, the ring finger smothered by the opal setting. His only endearing trait, which Florentino Ariza recognized the first time he saw him walking, was that he had the same doe’s gait as his daughter. However, when he showed him the chair so that he could sit down, he did not find Lorenzo Daza as harsh as he appeared to be, and his courage revived when he invited him to have a glass of anisette. Florentino Ariza had never had a drink at eight o’clock in the morning, but he accepted with gratitude because his need for one was urgent.
当弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨被洛伦索·达萨拉着胳膊穿过教堂广场，直走到教区咖啡馆的拱廊下，并被邀请坐在露台上时，他连气都喘不上来了。这个钟点还没有其他客人，一个黑女人正在冲洗宽敞大厅的地砖。大厅的彩色磨砂玻璃满是裂痕和灰尘，厅里的椅子四脚朝天地放在大理石桌子上。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨曾经好几次看见洛伦索·达萨在这里跟集市上的阿斯图里亚斯人一边赌钱，一边喝桶装的红酒，还大声地为连年的战争而争吵，但吵的是其他地方的战争，并不是我们这里的。他相信爱情的宿命，很多时候他都会问自己，迟早有一天他会和洛伦索·达萨见面，那情形将是什么样子。这场会面没有任何人的力量能够阻止，因为它是两人命中注定的。他设想会有一场不平等的争吵，因为不仅费尔明娜·达萨在信中提醒过他她父亲性格暴躁，他自己也亲眼见识过：即便是在牌桌上大笑的时候，洛伦索·达萨的眼神看起来也像暴怒一般。他全身上下都是粗鲁的明证：丑陋可憎的大肚子，拿腔拿调的说话声，像猞猁一样的络腮胡子，粗糙的双手，以及无名指上那只蛋白石的戒指。他唯一能打动人的地方，也是弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨第一次看见他走路时便注意到的，就是他和女儿一样，走起路来像头小母鹿。然而，当他指了指椅子示意弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨坐下时，他觉得他没有看上去那么粗鲁了。当他邀请弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨喝一杯茴香酒时，后者恢复了平稳的呼吸。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨从没在早上八点钟喝过酒，但他还是心存感激地接受了，因为此时此刻他正迫切地需要喝上一杯。
He tried to seduce her with all kinds of flattery. He tried to make her understand that love at her age was an illusion, he tried to convince her to send back the letters and return to the Academy and beg forgiveness on her knees, and he gave his word of honor that he would be the first to help her find happiness with a worthy suitor. But it was like talking to a corpse. Defeated, he at last lost his temper at lunch on Monday, and while he choked back insults and blasphemies and was about to explode, she put the meat knife to her throat, without dramatics but with a steady hand and eyes so aghast that he did not dare to challenge her. That was when he took the risk of talking for five minutes, man to man, with the accursed upstart whom he did not remember ever having seen, and who had come into his life to his great sorrow. By force of habit he picked up his revolver before he went out, but he was careful to hide it under his shirt.
他说尽了各种好话来打动她，试图让她明白她这个年龄的爱情不过是海市蜃楼，一厢情愿地希望能说服她退回那些情书，回到学校去，跪下来求得校方原谅。他还许诺说，到时他会第一个为女儿找一位配得上她的求婚者，让她得到幸福。但他仿佛就像在对着一个死人说话。他被彻底打败了。于是，星期一午餐的时候，他终于失控了，就在他极力忍住那些就要破口而出的辱骂和诅咒时，费尔明娜·达萨把切肉的刀子架在了自己的脖子上。她并没有表现得很激动，但十分坚定，呆滞的眼神吓得他不敢再发出挑战。也就是在那时，他决定试试去找那个不知天高地厚的浑小子，与他男人对男人地谈上五分钟。他根本不记得曾经见过这个不合时宜地闯进他生活来的小伙子。纯粹是出于习惯，他在出门前带上了左轮手枪，但小心地把它藏在了衬衣下面。
Lorenzo Daza, in fact, took no more than five minutes to say what he had to say, and he did so with a disarming sincerity that confounded Florentino Ariza. When his wife died he had set only one goal for himself: to turn his daughter into a great lady. The road was long and uncertain for a mule trader who did not know how to read or write and whose reputation as a horse thief was not so much proven as widespread in the province of San Juan de la Ciénaga. He lit a mule driver’s cigar and lamented: “The only thing worse than bad health is a bad name.” He said, however, that the real secret of his fortune was that none of his mules worked as hard and with so much determination as he did himself, even during the bitterest days of the wars when the villages awoke in ashes and the fields in ruins. Although his daughter was never aware of the premeditation in her destiny, she behaved as if she were an enthusiastic accomplice. She was intelligent and methodical, to the point where she taught her father to read as soon as she herself learned to, and at the age of twelve she had a mastery of reality that would have allowed her to run the house without the help of her Aunt Escolástica. He sighed: “She’s a mule worth her weight in gold.” When his daughter finished primary school with highest marks in every subject and honorable mention at graduation, he understood that San Juan de la Ciénaga was too narrow for his dreams. Then he liquidated lands and animals and moved with new impetus and seventy thousand gold pesos to this ruined city and its moth-eaten glories, where a beautiful woman with an old-fashioned upbringing still had the possibility of being reborn through a fortunate marriage. The sudden appearance of Florentino Ariza had been an unforeseen obstacle in his hard-fought plan. “So I have come to make a request of you,” said Lorenzo Daza. He dipped the end of his cigar in the anisette, pulled on it and drew no smoke, then concluded in a sorrowful voice:
事实上，洛伦索·达萨没用五分钟就说明了来意。他放下架子，说得那么诚恳，以至于弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨一时间不知所措。自从妻子死后，他给自己定下的唯一目标，就是让女儿成为一位高贵的夫人。而对一个大字不识、靠贩卖骡子为生的商人来说，这条路漫长而且没有把握，更何况在圣胡安·德拉希耶纳加省，他那盗马贼的名声虽没有坐实却流传很广。他点燃了一支脚夫的雪茄，感慨地说：“唯一比坏身体更糟的，就是坏名声。”然而他又说，他变得富有的秘密就在于，在他那众多的骡子中，没有哪一头能像他本人这样勤劳和坚韧，即便是在最艰苦的战争时期，在村庄一夜间被烧为灰烬，田园荒芜殆尽的时候，他仍旧如此。虽然女儿并不知道父亲对自己前途的高瞻远瞩，但她却一直表现得像一个积极的同谋。她聪明，而且做事有条不紊，甚至刚一学会认字就想到要教父亲识字。十二岁时，她就已经非常懂事，甚至不需要埃斯科拉斯蒂卡姑妈的帮忙就能操持家务。洛伦索·达萨感叹道：“这真是一头金骡子啊。”当女儿以门门功课都是五分的成绩小学毕业，并且在毕业典礼上获得荣誉奖状时，他意识到圣胡安·德拉希耶纳加太狭小了，在那里无法实现他的梦想。于是，他变卖了田地和牲口，怀着全新的热情，揣着七万金比索，来到了这座破败的城市。尽管城市的昔日辉煌已不复存在，但在这里，一个美丽的、受过古典教育的女人尚有机会通过一桩美满的婚事获得新生。而弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的闯入给这个需要全力一搏的计划带来了意想不到的障碍。“所以，我是来恳求您的。”洛伦索·达萨说。他把雪茄的烟头浸到茴香酒中，然后又吸了一口已经没有烟雾的烟，用忧伤的口吻最后说道：
Florentino Ariza had listened to him as he sipped his anisette, and was so absorbed in the disclosure of Fermina Daza’s past that he did not even ask himself what he was going to say when it was his turn to speak. But when the moment arrived, he realized that anything he might say would compromise his destiny.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨一边听他说，一边小口呷着茴香酒，完全沉浸在对费尔明娜·达萨过去生活的勾勒之中，甚至都没有思忖一下轮到自己开口时该说些什么。但到了这个时候，他意识到无论说什么都会牵动自己的命运。
“Get out of our way.”
“请您别挡我们的路。”
“Have you spoken to her?” he asked.
“您跟她谈过吗？”他问道。
“None of that,” said Lorenzo Daza. “This is a matter for men and it will be decided by men.”
“根本不是这么回事，”洛伦索·达萨说，“这是男人的事，应该在男人之间解决。”
“I ask you the question,” said Florentino Ariza, “because it seems to me that she is the one who has to decide.”
“我这样问您，”弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨说，“是因为我认为她才是有权决定的人。”
“That doesn’t concern you,” said Lorenzo Daza.
“这您可管不着。”洛伦索·达萨说。
His tone had become threatening, and a customer who had just sat down at a nearby table turned to look at them. Florentino Ariza spoke in a most tenuous voice, but with the most imperious resolution of which he was capable:
他的语气变得带有威胁性，邻桌的一位客人回过头看了看他们。而弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的语调却是再温和不过了，但表现出他所能表现的最坚定的决心。
“Be that as it may, I cannot answer without knowing what she thinks. It would be a betrayal.”
“无论如何，”他说，“如果不知道她是怎么想的，我无法给您任何回答。否则，那就是背叛。”
Then Lorenzo Daza leaned back in his chair, his eyelids reddened and damp, and his left eye spun in its orbit and stayed twisted toward the outside. He, too, lowered his voice.
洛伦索·达萨朝身后的椅背靠去，眼皮通红而湿润，左眼在眼眶里转了一下，歪向外眼角。他同样也压低了声音，说：
“Don’t force me to shoot you,” he said.
“您别逼我给您一枪。”
Florentino Ariza felt his intestines filling with cold froth. But his voice did not tremble because he felt himself illuminated by the Holy Spirit.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨感到腹中充满寒气。但他的声音没有颤抖，因为他觉得自己此刻被圣神之光照亮了。
“Shoot me,” he said, with his hand on his chest. “There is no greater glory than to die for love.”
“您朝我开枪吧。”他把手放在胸膛上说，“没有什么比为爱而死更光荣的了。”
“Son of a bitch!”
“婊——子——养——的！”
That same week he took his daughter away on the journey that would make her forget. He gave her no explanation at all, but burst into her bedroom, his mustache stained with fury and his chewed cigar, and ordered her to pack. She asked him where they were going, and he answered: “To our death.” Frightened by a response that seemed too close to the truth, she tried to face him with the courage of a few days before, but he took off his belt with its hammered copper buckle, twisted it around his fist, and hit the table with a blow that resounded through the house like a rifle shot. Fermina Daza knew very well the extent and occasion of her own strength, and so she packed a bedroll with two straw mats and a hammock, and two large trunks with all her clothes, certain that this was a trip from which she would never return. Before she dressed, she locked herself in the bathroom and wrote a brief farewell letter to Florentino Ariza on a sheet torn from the pack of toilet paper. Then she cut off her entire braid at the nape of her neck with cuticle scissors, rolled it inside a velvet box embroidered with gold thread, and sent it along with the letter.
就在那个星期，他带着女儿去旅行了，为了让她忘掉一切。他没有向女儿做出任何解释，而是冲进她的房间，嘴唇上方的胡子沾着因暴怒而嚼碎的雪茄沫，命令女儿收拾行李。她问他去哪里，他回答说：“去死。”她被这个听上去过于真实的回答吓了一跳，试图用前几天的勇气面对他，但他解下自己带有实心铜扣的皮带，在拳头上绕了一圈，然后狠狠地在桌子上抽了一下，声音像来复枪的枪声一样响彻整座房子。费尔明娜·达萨很清楚自己的力量所能发挥的限度和时机，于是将两张草席和一个吊床打成铺盖卷，把所有的衣服都装进两个大箱子，她确信这是一次永远不会再回来的旅行。穿上衣服之前，她把自己锁在卫生间里，匆忙地从卫生纸卷上撕下一张，给弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨写了一封简短的告别信。接着，她用修枝条的剪子从后颈处齐根剪下自己的发辫，将它卷好装在绣有金线的天鹅绒盒子里，连同那封信一起寄给了弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨。
Lorenzo Daza had to look at him sideways, like a parrot, to see him with his twisted eye. He did not pronounce the four words so much as spit them out, one by one:
为了让歪了的眼睛看到他，洛伦索·达萨不得不侧过头来，就像鹦鹉一样。他说出的仿佛不是一个词，而是从他嘴中吐出的一个一个字：
It was a demented trip. The first stage along the ridges of the Sierra Nevada, riding muleback in a caravan of Andean mule drivers, lasted eleven days, during which time they were stupefied by the naked sun or drenched by the horizontal October rains and almost always petrified by the numbing vapors rising from the precipices. On the third day a mule maddened by gadflies fell into a ravine with its rider, dragging along the entire line, and the screams of the man and his pack of seven animals tied to one another continued to rebound along the cliffs and gullies for several hours after the disaster, and continued to resound for years and years in the memory of Fermina Daza. All her baggage plunged over the side with the mules, but in the centuries-long instant of the fall until the scream of terror was extinguished at the bottom, she did not think of the poor dead mule driver or his mangled pack but of how unfortunate it was that the mule she was riding had not been tied to the others as well.
那是一次疯狂的旅行。最初，他们同安第斯山的脚夫们组成骡队，同行了十一天。一行人骑在骡背上，在内华达山的悬崖峭壁上前行，一时被炎炎烈日烤得皮肤干裂，一时又被十月的水平雨浇得浑身湿透，几乎每时每刻都被陡峭山峦上那令人昏昏欲睡的雾气弄得呼吸艰难。上路第三天，一头母骡子被牛虻叮后发了疯，连同背上的骑手一起摔下了悬崖，还把同它拴在一起的几头骡子也带了下去。骑手和七头畜生的惨叫声在山谷和峭壁间回荡了好几个小时，而后又在费尔明娜·达萨的记忆中年复一年地回响着。她的全部行李都同骡子一起坠入了深渊，但在那个仿佛持续了几个世纪的永恒瞬间，在从骡子和骑手掉下去，直到他们惊恐的惨叫声消失在深谷中的这段时间里，费尔明娜·达萨心里想的并不是那位摔死的可怜骑手，也不是那队粉身碎骨的骡子，而是遗憾自己骑的骡子没有和它们拴在一起。
It was the first time she had ever ridden, but the terror and unspeakable privations of the trip would not have seemed so bitter to her if it had not been for the certainty that she would never see Florentino Ariza again or have the consolation of his letters. She had not said a word to her father since the beginning of the trip, and he was so confounded that he hardly spoke to her even when it was an absolute necessity to do so, or he sent the mule drivers to her with messages. When their luck was good they found some roadside inn that served rustic food which she refused to eat, and rented them canvas cots stained with rancid perspiration and urine. But more often they spent the night in Indian settlements, in open-air public dormitories built at the side of the road, with their rows of wooden poles and roofs of bitter palm where every passerby had the right to stay until dawn. Fermina Daza could not sleep through a single night as she sweated in fear and listened in the darkness to the coming and going of silent travelers who tied their animals to the poles and hung their hammocks where they could.
那是她第一次骑牲口，但若不是想到肯定再也见不到弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨、再也得不到他的信带来的慰藉，旅途的可怕以及数不清的艰辛原本也不会令她如此痛苦。从旅行一开始，她就再没和父亲说过一句话，而他自己也心烦意乱，只在必要时和她说上两句，或者让脚夫给她捎个口信。运气好时，他们会在路边遇到一家客栈，那里提供一些山里的食物，而她却拒绝吃。客栈还租给他们几张铺着麻布的床，上面被发霉的汗渍和尿渍弄得污秽不堪。但更多时候，他们只能在印第安人的村落过夜。那里有一些建在路边的露天公共住所，用粗树枝架起围墙，苦棕榈叶搭成屋顶，所有路过的人都可以在里面睡上一晚，直到天亮。旅途中，费尔明娜·达萨没有睡过一宿整觉，总是吓得直冒冷汗，在黑暗中感觉到过路的人们悄悄忙碌着，把牲口拴在树干上，并尽可能地找一个地方挂起吊床。
At nightfall, when the first travelers would arrive, the place was uncrowded and peaceful, but by dawn it had been transformed into a fairground, wit h a mass of hammocks hanging at different levels and Aruac Indians from the mountains sleeping on their haunches, with the raging of the tethered goats, and the uproar of the fighting cocks in their pharaonic crates, and the panting silence of the mountain dogs, who had been taught not to bark because of the dangers of war. Those privations were familiar to Lorenzo Daza, who had trafficked through the region for half his life and almost always met up with old friends at dawn. For his daughter it was perpetual agony. The stench of the loads of salted catfish added to the loss of appetite caused by her grief, and eventually destroyed her habit of eating, and if she did not go mad with despair it was because she always found relief in the memory of Florentino Ariza. She did not doubt that this was the land of forgetting.
傍晚，当第一批旅行者到达时，这里还空旷安静，但天亮时却已变成热闹的集市。吊床层层叠叠地挂着，从山里来的阿劳科人则蹲着睡了一宿。拴起来的山羊愤怒地叫着，斗鸡在它们那法老式的箱子里扑腾，而山里的野狗默不作声地喘着粗气，因为它们常年处在战争的危险当中，早已学会了不能乱吠。这些艰苦对于在本地做了半辈子买卖的洛伦索·达萨来说司空见惯，他甚至还总能在天亮时碰见个把老朋友。可对于他的女儿来说，却是长久的痛苦。摞成堆的咸鲇鱼散发出恶臭，加上她本来就因相思之苦而没有胃口，最终导致她茶饭不思。而如果说她到底没有因绝望而发疯，那是因为她从对弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的回忆中找到了一丝安慰。她毫不怀疑这片地方是遗忘之地。
Another constant terror was the war. Since the start of the journey there had been talk of the danger of running into scattered patrols, and the mule drivers had instructed them in the various ways of recognizing the two sides so that they could act accordingly. They often encountered squads of mounted soldiers under the command of an officer, who rounded up new recruits by roping them as if they were cattle on the hoof. Overwhelmed by so many horrors, Fermina Daza had forgotten about the one that seemed more legendary than imminent, until one night when a patrol of unknown affiliation captured two travelers from the caravan and hanged them from a campano tree half a league from the settlement. Lorenzo Daza did not even know them, but he had them taken down and he gave them a Christian burial in thanksgiving for not having met a similar fate. And he had reason: the assailants had awakened him with a rifle in his stomach, and a commander in rags, his face smeared with charcoal, had shone a light on him and asked him if he was Liberal or Conservative.
另一件时常令人恐惧的事就是战争。旅行伊始，大家就说起遭遇散兵游勇的危险。几个脚夫教了他们好几种方法以分辨来者是哪一派别，便于到时见机行事。他们经常会碰到一队执行征兵任务的骑兵，由一名军官带领，像绑牲口似的把新兵绑在一起，拖着他们全速前进。费尔明娜·达萨被这种种恐怖的景象压垮了，甚至忘记了那个对她来说更像是传奇而非近在咫尺的人，直到一天晚上一支不明党派的巡逻队绑架了骡队中的两名旅行者，把他们吊死在距离印第安人村落半里[7]地的一棵树上。洛伦索·达萨与他们非亲非故，却让人把尸体放下来，按照基督教礼节将他们埋葬，并行了感恩礼，感谢上帝没有让自己遭此厄运。他这么做是绝对有道理的。之前，那伙袭击者曾突然闯进来，把枪筒顶在他的肚子上，叫醒了他。一个衣衫褴褛、脸上涂着黑灰的军官用灯照着他，问他是自由党还是保守党。（注：[7] 本书中的里均指西班牙里。）
“What luck!” said the commander, and he left with his hand raised in a salute. “Long live the King!”
“算你走运！”军官说完，将手臂高高举起，向他告别道：“国王万岁！”
Two days later they descended to the luminous plain where the joyful town of Valledupar was located. There were cockfights in the patios, accordion music on the street corners, riders on thoroughbred horses, rockets and bells. A pyrotechnical castle was being assembled. Fermina Daza did not even notice the festivities. They stayed in the home of Uncle Lisímaco Sánchez, her mother’s brother, who had come out to receive them on the King’s Highway at the head of a noisy troop of young relatives riding the best-bred horses in the entire province, and they were led through the streets of the town to the accompaniment of exploding fireworks. The house was on the Grand Plaza, next to the colonial church that had been repaired several times, and it seemed more like the main house on a hacienda because of its large, somber rooms and its gallery that faced an orchard of fruit trees and smelled of hot sugarcane juice.
两天以后他们下山，来到明亮的平原，快乐的巴耶杜帕尔镇就坐落在那里。院子里有人在斗鸡，街角回荡着手风琴的乐声，骑手骑在良种马上，四处响着鞭炮声和钟声。一座燃放烟火的高塔正被架起。费尔明娜·达萨甚至没有注意到这一派欢闹的景象。他们寄宿在她母亲的兄弟利希马科·桑切斯舅舅的家里。舅舅率领着浩浩荡荡的一队年轻亲戚，骑着全省最好的良种骏马，到皇家公路上来迎接他们，引领他们在烟火的轰鸣声中穿过镇子的一条条街道。舅舅家的房子在大广场区，就在几经修缮的殖民时期的教堂旁边，看上去更像一座庄园工厂，因为各个房间都宽敞而阴暗，走廊对面是一座种满果树的园子，散发出一股热甘蔗酒的味道。
“Neither one or the other,” said Lorenzo Daza. “I am a Spanish subject.”
“我既不是自由党，也不是保守党。”洛伦索·达萨答道，“我是西班牙平民。”
No sooner ha d they dismounted in the stables than the reception rooms were overflowing with numerous unknown relatives whose unbearable effusiveness was a scourge to Fermina Daza, for she was incapable of ever loving anyone else in this world, she suffered from saddle burn, she was dying of fatigue and loose bowels, and all she longed for was a solitary and quiet place to cry. Her cousin Hildebranda Sánchez, two years older than she and with the same imperial haughtiness, was the only one who understood her condition as soon as she saw her, because she, too, was being consumed in the fiery coals of reckless love. When it grew dark she took her to the bedroom that she had prepared to share with her, and seeing the burning ulcers on her buttocks, she could not believe tha t she still lived. With the help of her mother, a very sweet woman who looked as much like her husband as if they were twins, she prepared a bath for her and cooled the burning with arnica compresses, while the thunder from the gunpowder castle shook the foundations of the house.
他们在马厩刚一下坐骑，一群陌生的亲戚就从主客厅里涌出来，用他们那令人无法忍受的热情扰得费尔明娜心烦意乱。此刻，她再没有心思去爱这世上的其他什么人，而且骡背上的长途跋涉弄得她浑身灼痛，困得要死，更何况还在闹肚子。她唯一渴望的，是找个僻静的地方，痛快地哭上一场。她的表姐伊尔德布兰达·桑切斯比她年长两岁，和她一样如女王般傲视一切。唯有她，从看见费尔明娜的第一眼起，就看穿了她的心事，因为她自己也在经受一段莽撞爱情的煎熬。傍晚时，她把费尔明娜带到准备好的卧室，让她同自己住在一起。她不明白，臀部磨出那么多火泡的费尔明娜是怎么活下来的。在母亲的帮助下——她母亲是一个极温柔的女人，和丈夫长得很像，就像孪生兄妹——伊尔德布兰达表姐为费尔明娜安排了坐浴，还为她敷上山金车花，以减轻灼烧的痛楚。与此同时，烟火塔的隆隆声震颤着整幢房子的地基。
At midnight the visitors left, the public fiesta scattered into smoldering embers, and Cousin Hildebranda lent Fermina Daza a madapollam nightgown and helped her to lie down in a bed with smooth sheets and feather pillows, and without warning she was filled with the instantaneous panic of happiness. When at last they were alone in the bedroom, Cousin Hildebranda bolted the door with a crossbar and from under the straw matting of her bed took out a manila envelope sealed in wax with the emblem of the national telegraph. It was enough for Fermina Daza to see her cousin’s expression of radiant malice for the pensive scent of white gardenias to grow again in her heart’s memory, and then she tore the red sealing wax with her teeth and drenched the eleven forbidden telegrams in a shower of tears until dawn.
夜半时分，来访的客人相继离开，庆祝相聚的人群也三三两两地散去。伊尔德布兰达表姐借给费尔明娜一件马大普兰亚麻棉织睡袍，让她躺在一张铺着整洁床单的床上，枕着羽毛枕。这一切使得一种幸福而慌乱的感觉顿时传遍费尔明娜的全身。终于，房中只剩下她们两人了。表姐插上门，从床席下取出一个马尼拉纸信封来，上面盖着国家电报局的火漆封印。只看了一眼表姐脸上那光芒四射神秘兮兮的表情，一股沁人肺腑的白色栀子花香便在费尔明娜的心头复苏了。她用牙将火漆印章咬得粉碎，泪水淌在那十一封言辞大胆的电报上，就这样，她沉浸在眼泪汇成的汪洋中，直到天明。
Then he knew. Before starting out on the journey, Lorenzo Daza had made the mistake of telegraphing the news to his brother-in-law Lisímaco Sánchez, and he in turn had sent the news to his vast and intricate network of kinfolk in numerous towns and villages throughout the province. So that Florentino Ariza not only learned the complete itinerary but also established an extensive brotherhood of telegraph operators who would follow the trail of Fermina Daza to the last settlement in Cabo de la Vela. This allowed him to maintain intensive communications with her from the time of her arrival in Valledupar, where she stayed three months, until the end of her journey in Riohacha, a year and a half later, when Lorenzo Daza took it for granted that his daughter had at last forgotten and he decided to return home. Perhaps he was not even aware of how much he had relaxed his vigilance, distracted as he was by the flattering words of the in-laws who after so many years had put aside their tribal prejudices and welcomed him with open arms as one of their own. The visit was a belated reconciliation, although that had not been its purpose. As a matter of fact, the family of Fermina Sánchez had been opposed in every way to her marrying an immigrant with no background who was a braggart and a boor and who was always traveling, trading his unbroken mules in a business that seemed too simple to be honest. Lorenzo Daza played for high stakes, because his sweetheart was the darling of a typical family of the region: an intricate tribe of wild women and softhearted men who were obsessed to the point of dementia with their sense of honor. Fermina Sánchez, however, settled on her desire with the blind determination of love when it is opposed, and she married him despite her family, with so much speed and so much secrecy that it seemed as if she had done so not for love but to cover over with a sacramental cloak some premature mistake.
原来，他什么都知道。洛伦索·达萨在旅行前犯了一个错误，他通过电报把行程告诉了小舅子利希马科·桑切斯，后者又把消息传给了人数众多、关系复杂、分布在全省各个村庄和角落里的亲戚们。于是，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨不仅了解到他们的整个路线，还建立起一条长长的电报员兄弟阵线，以便追寻费尔明娜·达萨的踪迹，一直到他们之前落脚的烛头村。而自从费尔明娜来到巴耶杜帕尔镇，弗洛伦蒂诺便得以和她频繁通信。她在这里住了三个月，然后动身前往别处，直到旅行的最后一站里奥阿查。在外漂泊了一年半后，洛伦索·达萨认定女儿已经忘记过去，便决定回家。或许他自己也不知道从什么时候开始放松了警惕，被妻子亲戚的甜言蜜语弄得飘飘然了。这么多年之后，妻子的族人终于放下了家族偏见，张开双臂接纳他成为他们中的一员。这次探亲是一次迟来的和解，尽管这并非此行的目的。原来，当初费尔明娜·桑切斯的家庭不惜一切代价反对她嫁给一个来历不明的外来者。此人夸夸其谈，举止粗鲁，且四处漂泊，靠贩卖未经驯化的骡子为生，这种生意太过低级，难免有坑蒙拐骗、不干不净的时候。洛伦索·达萨赌得很大，因为他追求的是当地最显赫家庭的掌上明珠。这是一个庞大的家族，女人们泼辣豪放，男人们心地仁厚却容易冲动，为了荣誉往往会失去理智甚至癫狂。然而，费尔明娜·桑切斯对这段受阻的爱情盲目而义无反顾地下定了决心，不顾家人的反对嫁给了他。她嫁得那么匆忙，那么秘密，就好像不是为爱而嫁，而是为了用那块神圣的头纱掩盖某种早熟的过失。
After their prolonged stay in Valledupar they continued their journey through the foothills of the mountains, crossing flowering meadows and dreamlike mesas, and in all the villages they were received as they had been in the first, with music and fireworks and new conspiratorial cousins and punctual messages in the telegraph offices. Fermina Daza soon realized that the afternoon of their arrival in Valledupar had not been unusual, but rather that in this fertile province every day of the week was lived as if it were a holiday. The visitors slept whereve r they happened to be at nightfall, and they ate wherever they happened to be hungry, for these were houses with open doors, where there was always a hammock hanging and a three-meat stew simmering on the stove in case guests arrived before the telegram announcing their arrival, as was almost always the case. Hildebranda Sánchez accompanied her cousin for the remainder of the trip, guiding her with joyful spirit through the tangled complexities of her blood to the very source of her origins. Fermina Daza learned about herself, she felt free for the first time, she felt herself befriended and protected, her lungs full of the air of liberty, which restored her tranquillity and her will to live. In her final years she would still recall the trip that, with the perverse lucidity of nostalgia, became more and more recent in her memory.
在巴耶杜帕尔镇逗留了很长一段时间后，他们继续旅行，翻山越岭，穿过鲜花盛开的草原和梦境般的高原。在所到的每个村庄，他们都受到和第一站同样的欢迎，音乐、鞭炮、新一拨串通一气的表姐妹，以及电报局里准时到达的信件。很快，费尔明娜·达萨发现他们到达巴耶杜帕尔的那个下午并不是特例，在这个富饶的省份，每一天人们都像在过节。来此地的客人天黑时随处都可睡下，饿了也随时都有饭吃，因为家家户户大门都是敞开的，屋里都挂着吊床，炉子上都炖着一锅热气腾腾的三肉炖杂烩，以防哪位客人在通知来访的电报到达之前就到了，而这是常有的事。伊尔德布兰达·桑切斯在余下的旅程中一路陪伴着表妹，兴致勃勃地向她讲述血脉融合的秘密，一直追溯到生命的起源。费尔明娜·达萨重新认识了自己，第一次感觉到成为自己的主人，感觉到被陪伴和被保护，胸中充满自由的气息，这让她恢复了宁静，又有了活下去的愿望。甚至到了暮年，她还会想起那次旅行，而且记忆犹新，越来越历历在目。
Twenty-five years later, Lorenzo Daza did not realize that his intransigence in his daughter’s love affair was a vicious repetition of his own past, and he complained of his misfortune to the same in-laws who had opposed him, as they had complained in their day to their own kin. Still, the time he spent in lamentation was time his daughter gained for her love affair. So that while he went about castrating calves and taming mules on the prosperous lands of his in-laws, she was free to spend time with a troop of female cousins under the command of Hildebranda Sánchez, the most beautiful and obliging of them all, whose hopeless passion for a married man, a father who was twenty years older than she, had to be satisfied with furtive glances.
二十五年后，洛伦索·达萨没有意识到，他对女儿恋爱的苛刻态度正是自己那段往事的再现。如今，他向这些曾经反对过自己婚事的大小舅子们倾诉不幸，而正是这同一批人，曾经也因同样的原因向他们的亲戚倾诉苦水。不过，他在自怨自艾中消磨掉的这些时间，却被他的女儿赢去享受自己的爱情了。当他在舅子们的肥沃土地上阉割牛犊、驯服骡子时，女儿正像脱缰的野马，和一群以伊尔德布兰达·桑切斯为首的表姐妹们一同漫步。这些表姐妹中，数伊尔德布兰达最漂亮，也最乐于助人。她爱上了一个比自己大二十岁且已有妻室儿女的男人，这种没有未来的炽热爱情只能通过暗送秋波聊以自慰。
In those days Hildebranda Sánchez was delirious with hope after visiting a fortune-teller whose clairvoyance had astonished her. Dismayed by her father’s intentions, Fermina Daza also went to consult with her. The cards said there was no obstacle in her future to a long and happy marriage, and that prediction gave her back her courage because she could not conceive of such a fortunate destiny with any man other than the one she loved. Exalted by that certainty, she assumed command of her fate. That was how the telegraphic correspondence with Florentino Ariza stopped being a concerto of intentions and illusory promises and became methodical and practical and more intense than ever. They set dates, established means, pledged their lives to their mutual determination to marry without consulting anyone, wherever and however they could, as soon as they were together again. Fermina Daza considered this commitment so binding that the night her father gave her permission to attend her first adult dance in the town of Fonseca, she did not think it was decent to accept without the consent of her fiancé. Florentino Ariza was in the transient hotel that night, playing cards with Lotario Thugut, when he was told he had an urgent telegram on the line.
那些日子，伊尔德布兰达·桑切斯在拜访了一位料事如神、令她惊讶不已的女巫后，整日沉浸在胡思乱想中。费尔明娜·达萨被父亲的意图吓坏了，也去向女巫求教。算命的纸牌告诉她，未来没有任何障碍阻挡她享有一段长久而幸福的婚姻。这个预言让她松了一口气，因为她根本没有想到，和自己分享如此美满命运的人可能并不是她此刻爱着的这个人。对未来有了把握之后，她兴奋不已，开始按自己的意志行事。于是，她和弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨之间的电报往来不再是堆砌着憧憬和虚幻的山盟海誓，而变得有条有理，实实在在，且比以往任何时候都更加频繁。他们定下了日子，明确了方式，用生命许下诺言，共同决定只要两人再次见面，无论在什么地方，也无论情形如何，都不征求其他任何人的意见，直接结为夫妻。费尔明娜·达萨恪守着这份誓言，以至于那天晚上在丰塞卡镇，父亲允许她参加第一次成年舞会，她却认为没有征得未婚夫的同意就出席舞会是不贞的表现。那晚，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨正在小旅馆里和洛达里奥·图古特玩纸牌，有人通知他有一封加急电报。
One night she came back from her daily walk stunned by the revelation that one could be happy not only without love, but despite it. The revelation alarmed her, because one of her cousins had surprised her parents in conversation with Lorenzo Daza, who had suggested the idea of arranging the marriage of his daughter to the only heir to the fabulous fortune of Cleofás Moscote. Fermina Daza knew who he was. She had seen him in the plazas, pirouetting his perfect horses with trappings so rich they seemed ornaments used for the Mass, and he was elegant and clever and had a dreamer’s eyelashes that could make the stones sigh, but she compared him to her memory of poor emaciated Florentino Ariza sitting under the almond trees in the little park, with the book of verses on his lap, and she did not find even the shadow of a doubt in her heart.
一天晚上，她像每日那样散步回来，惊愕地听说不仅没有爱情能够幸福，而且与爱情背道而驰也能幸福。这个说法让她惊慌失措，因为一个表姐妹无意间听到了自己父母和洛伦索·达萨的谈话。洛伦索·达萨提到想把女儿嫁给克莱奥法·莫斯科特万贯家产的唯一继承人。费尔明娜·达萨认识这个人。她曾经看见他在广场上遛他那些完美无缺的良驹。马身上的披挂令人眼花缭乱，就像祭台上的装饰。他风度翩翩，身手矫健，迷人的眼睫毛甚至会令石头动心。费尔明娜将他和自己记忆中的弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨，那个坐在小花园的杏树下，可怜兮兮、骨瘦如柴、膝头放着诗集的小伙子作了一番对比，心里没有感到一丝一毫的犹豫。
It was the telegraph operator from Fonseca, who had keyed in through seven intermediate stations so that Fermina Daza could ask permission to attend the dance. When she obtained it, however, she was not satisfied with the simple affirmative answer but asked for proof that in fact it was Florentino Ariza operating the telegraph key at the other end of the line. More astonished than flattered, he composed an identifying phrase: Tell her that I swear by the crowned goddess. Fermina Daza recognized the password and stayed at her first adult dance until seven in the morning, when she had to change in a rush in order not to be late for Mass. By then she had more letters and telegrams in the bottom of her trunk than her father had taken away from her, and she had learned to behave with the air of a married woman. Lorenzo Daza interpreted these changes in her manner as proof that distance and time had cured her of her juvenile fantasies, but he never spoke to her about his plans for the arranged marriage. Their relations had become fluid within the formal reserve that she had imposed since the expulsion of Aunt Escolástica, and this allowed them such a comfortable modus vivendi that no one would have doubted that it was based on affection.
是丰塞卡的电报员在线上等他。这位电报员联通了七个中转台，只为了帮助费尔明娜·达萨征得参加舞会的许可。但得到许可后，费尔明娜并不满足于这个简单的肯定答复，反而进一步要求证明在线路那端操控发报机的确实是弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨本人。受宠若惊的他发出了一句足以证明身份的话：请告诉她我以花冠女神的名义起誓。费尔明娜·达萨认出了这句暗语，便安心去出席了自己的第一次成年舞会。直到第二天早上七点，她才匆匆换下衣服，赶去望弥撒。那个时候，她箱底藏着的信件和电报已远远多于当初父亲抢走的那些，而她也学会了让自己的行为举止像已婚女人那样成熟稳重。洛伦索·达萨将女儿举止上的改变理解为时间和距离已经治愈了她的青春妄想。但他从未向她提起过自己为她定下的那桩婚事。自从他把埃斯科拉斯蒂卡姑妈赶走后，女儿如今在表面上都对他客客气气，父女关系也融洽了许多，这让他们得以和睦共处，谁也不会怀疑这种和睦并非出自真心。
It was at this time that Florentino Ariza decided to tell her in his letters of his determination to salvage the treasure of the sunken galleon for her. It was true, and it had come to him in a flash of inspiration one sunlit afternoon when the sea seemed paved with aluminum because of the numbers of fish brought to the surface by mullein. All the birds of the air were in an uproar because of the kill, and the fishermen had to drive them away with their oars so they would not have to fight with them for the fruits of that prohibited miracle. The use of the mullein plant to put the fish to sleep had been prohibited by law since colonial times, but it continued to be a common practice-among the fishermen of the Caribbean until it was replaced by dynamite. One of Florentino Ariza’s pastimes during Fermina Daza’s journey was to watch from the jetties as the fishermen loaded their canoes with enormous nets filled with sleeping fish. At the same time, a gang of boys who swam like sharks asked curious bystanders to toss coins into the water so they could dive to the bottom for them. They were the same boys who swam out to meet the ocean liners for that purpose, and whose skill in the art of diving had been the subject of so many tourist accounts written in the United States and Europe. Florentino Ariza had always known about them, even before he knew about love, but it had never occurred to him that perhaps they might be able to bring up the fortune from the galleon. It occurred to him that afternoon, and from the following Sunday until Fermina Daza’s return almost a year later, he had an additional motive for delirium.
正是在这个时期，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨决定在信中告诉她，他正准备努力为她打捞那艘沉船里的财宝。事实的确如此。那是一个明媚的下午，无数条鱼被毒鱼草熏得浮上水面，大海仿佛铺上了一层铝箔，此时他脑中灵光一现，冒出了这个主意。空中的鸟儿都被这场屠杀惊扰得乱成一片，渔民们不得不用船桨吓唬它们，免得它们争夺这次违禁捕捞带来的奇迹般的果实。虽然毒鱼草只是把鱼熏得昏睡过去，但自从殖民时期起就被法律禁止使用。可它始终都是加勒比地区的渔民光天化日之下的惯用手段，直到被炸药取代为止。在费尔明娜·达萨外出旅行的这段日子里，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的消遣之一便是在防波堤上看渔民如何将满载着睡鱼的巨大拖网装上他们的独木舟。与此同时，一群像鲨鱼一样水性极好的孩子请求看热闹的人们往海里扔硬币，然后他们再到水底把硬币捞上来。这些孩子还抱着同样的目的，游到海里去迎接远洋轮船。由于他们娴熟的潜水技能，在美国和欧洲已有很多旅游纪实报道描写过他们。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨很早以前就认识他们，甚至比他初识爱情还要早，但他从未想过或许他们可以让沉船的财宝浮出水面。那天下午，他突然想到了这一点，于是从接下来的那个星期日开始，直到差不多一年后费尔明娜·达萨归来，他的胡思乱想又多了一种动力。
After talking to him for only ten minutes, Euclides, one of the boy swimmers, became as excited as he was at the idea of an underwater exploration. Florentino Ariza did not reveal the whole truth of the enterprise, but he informed himself thoroughly regarding his abilities as a diver and navigator. He asked him if he could descend without air to a depth of twenty meters, and Euclides told him yes. He asked him if he was prepared to sail a fisherman’s canoe by himself in the open sea in the middle of a storm with no instruments other than his instinct, and Euclides told him yes. He asked him if he could find a specific spot sixteen nautical miles to the northwest of the largest island in the Sotavento Archipelago, and Euclides told him yes. He asked him if he was capable of navigating by the stars at night, and Euclides told him yes. He asked him if he was prepared to do so for the same wages the fishermen paid him for helping them to fish, and Euclides told him yes, but with an additional five reales on Sundays. He asked him if he knew how to defend himself against sharks, and Euclides told him yes, for he had magic tricks to frighten them away. He asked him if he was able to keep a secret even if they put him in the torture chambers of the Inquisition, and Euclides told him yes, in fact he did not say no to anything, and he knew how to say yes with so much conviction that there was no way to doubt him. Then the boy reckoned expenses: renting the canoe, renting the canoe paddle, renting fishing equipment so that no one would suspect the truth behind their incursions. It was also necessary to take along food, a demijohn of fresh water, an oil lamp, a pack of tallow candles, and a hunter’s horn to call for help in case of emergency.
在这群戏水的男孩中有一个叫欧克利德斯的，和弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨聊了不到十分钟，便和他一样对海底探险兴奋不已。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨并没有向他透露自己的真实意图，只是深入了解了一下他的潜水和航海本领。他问他是否能憋气下沉到海底二十米，欧克利德斯回答说行。他问他是否能孤身一人驾着打鱼用的独木船出海，不靠任何工具，仅凭本能冒着暴风雨在开阔的海面上行驶，欧克利德斯回答说行。他问他是否能准确定位距离索塔文托群岛最大岛屿西北方向十六海里的一个地方，欧克利德斯回答说行。他问他是否能在夜间航行，靠星星分辨方向，欧克利德斯回答说行。他问他是否愿意按照他帮渔民打鱼的日工资来完成这项工作，欧克利德斯回答说行，但星期日要多付五个里亚尔的加班费。他问他是否能在遇到鲨鱼时自卫防身，欧克利德斯回答说行，因为他会魔术可以吓跑鲨鱼。他问他是否能保守保密，即便被押到宗教裁判所的刑具上拷问，欧克利德斯回答说行。没有一件事他回答说不行，而且“行”字说得那么理直气壮，让人无从置疑。最后，他给弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨列出了花销清单：独木船的租金，宽叶桨的租金，捕鱼装备的租金，后面这一项是为了让别人不对他出海的真实目的起疑。此外，还需要带上食物，一大罐淡水，一盏油灯，一捆用动物油脂做的蜡烛，以及一只猎人用的牛角号，以便危急时刻求救。
Euclides was about twelve years old, and he was fast and clever and an incessant talker, with an eel’s body that could slither through a bull’s eye. The weather had tanned his skin to such a degree that it was impossible to imagine his original color, and this made his big yellow eyes seem more radiant. Florentino Ariza decided on the spot that he was the perfect companion for an adventure of such magnitude, and they embarked without further delay the following Sunday.
欧克利德斯约莫十二岁，身手敏捷，鬼心眼儿多，说起话来滔滔不绝，身体就像欧洲鳗鲡，仿佛生来就是为了在船舷上的牛眼窗中钻来钻去的。他的皮肤久经风吹日晒，粗糙得已经想象不出原本的颜色，这让他那双黄色的大眼睛显得更加炯炯有神。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨当即认定，他就是自己这次寻宝冒险的完美同谋。于是，两人没有再多耽搁，就在接下来的那个星期日开始行动了。
They sailed out of the fishermen’s port at dawn, well provisioned and better disposed, Euclides almost naked, with only the loincloth that he always wore, and Florentino Ariza with his frock coat, his tenebrous hat, his patent-leather boots, the poet’s bow at his neck, and a book to pass the time during the crossing to the islands. From the very first Sunday he realized that Euclides was as good a navigator as he was a diver, and that he had astonishing knowledge of the character of the sea and the debris in the bay. He could recount in the most unexpected detail the history of each rusting hulk of a boat, he knew the age of each buoy, the origin of every piece of rubbish, the number of links in the chain with which the Spaniards closed off the entrance of the bay. Fearing that he might also know the real purpose of his expedition, Florentino Ariza asked him sly questions and in this way realized that Euclides did not have the slightest suspicion about the sunken galleon.
天刚刚亮，他们便装备齐全、满怀信心地从渔民的港口起锚出发了。欧克利德斯几乎全身赤裸，只穿着他平日的那块遮羞布。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨则穿着他那件长礼服，头戴黑帽，脚踏漆皮皮靴，脖子上系着诗人式的领结，还随身带着一本书，作为到达群岛之前一路上的消遣。从第一个星期日起，他便发现欧克利德斯不仅是个潜水好手，还是个熟练的水手，对大海的天性以及港湾处的废铜烂铁了如指掌。他可以讲出那里每一条被氧化得锈迹斑斑、只剩下一具空壳的破船的历史，并说出很多意想不到的细节来。他知道每只浮标的年龄，每一片瓦砾的来历，以及西班牙人用来封锁港口的铁链上有多少圈铁环。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨担心他对此次探险的真实目的心知肚明，便拐弯抹角地问了他几个问题，结果发现他对那条沉船一无所知。
Ever since he had first heard the story of the treasure in the transient hotel, Florentino Ariza had learned all he could about the habits of galleons. He learned that the San José was not the only ship in the coral depths. It was, in fact, the flagship of the Terra Firma fleet, and had arrived here after May 1708, having sailed from the legendary fair of Portobello in Panama where it had taken on part of its fortune: three hundred trunks of silver from Peru and Veracruz, and one hundred ten trunks of pearls gathered and counted on the island of Contadora. During the long month it had remained here, the days and nights had been devoted to popular fiestas, and the rest of the treasure intended to save the Kingdom of Spain from poverty had been taken aboard: one hundred sixteen trunks of emeralds from Muzo and Somondoco and thirty million gold coins.
自从在小旅馆里第一次听说那个宝藏的故事，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨便开始尽一切可能打听关于沉船的各种信息。他了解到，圣何塞号并非唯一一艘躺在珊瑚丛中的沉船。事实上，它是陆地号船队的旗舰，于一七〇八年五月后到达这里，来自巴拿马波多贝罗那个闻名遐迩的集市。在那里，它装上了第一批财宝：三百只装满秘鲁和维拉克鲁斯白银的箱子，以及一百一十箱在孔塔多拉岛集中并清点好的珍珠。这只舰船在那里逗留长达一个月，人们日夜狂欢，最后装上了足够把西班牙王国从贫穷中拯救出来的其余财宝：一百一十六箱穆索和索蒙多科祖母绿宝石，以及三千万枚金币。
The Terra Firma fleet was composed of no less than twelve supply ships of varying sizes, and it set sail from this port traveling in a convoy with a French squadron that was heavily armed but still incapable of protecting the expedition from the accurate cannon shot of the English squadron under Commander Charles Wager, who waited for it in the Sotavento Archipelago, at the entrance to the bay. So the San José was not the only sunken vessel, although there was no reliable documented record of how many had succumbed and how many had managed to escape the English fire. What was certain was that the flagship had been among the first to sink, along with the entire crew and the commander standing straight on the quarterdeck, and that she alone carried most of the cargo.
陆地号船队由至少十二艘大小不同的船只组成。它从这个港口起锚出发，一路上由一支法国舰队护航，但这支装备优良的舰队最终没能把远征队伍从英国舰队的精准炮击中拯救出来。那些英国人在卡洛斯·瓦格尔指挥官的带领下，在索塔文托群岛附近海湾的出口处伏击了他们。所以说，圣何塞号并非唯一的沉船，尽管究竟有多少船被击沉、又有多少船从炮火中逃脱，并没有确切记载。但毫无疑问的是，这艘旗舰是最先沉入大海的船之一，和它一起葬身大海的，还有全体船员以及纹丝不动站在后甲板上的船长，而船上载着船队大部分的货物。
Suffocating in his formal clothes under the infernal sun, Florentino Ariza indicated to Euclides that he should try to dive to a depth of twenty meters and bring back anything he might find at the bottom. The water was so clear that he saw him moving below like a tarnished shark among the blue ones that crossed his path without touching him. Then he saw him disappear into a thicket of coral, and just when he thought that he could not possibly have any more air in his lungs, he heard his voice at his back. Euclides was standing on the bottom, with his arms raised and the water up to his waist. And so they continued exploring deeper sites, always moving toward the north, sailing over the indifferent manta rays, the timid squid, the rosebushes in the shadows, until Euclides concluded that they were wasting their time.
穿着那身肃穆的黑色礼服，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨被仿佛来自地狱的烈日烤得浑身燥热。他让欧克利德斯潜到二十米深的水下，无论找到什么东西都带回来给他。海水很清，他看见欧克利德斯在水下游动着，像一条鲨鱼一样在蓝色的鲨群中穿梭，一条条鲨鱼与他擦身而过，却没有碰他。之后，他看见他消失在珊瑚丛中。正当他认为欧克利德斯的氧气已经耗尽时，听到背后传来喊声。欧克利德斯站在水里，举着双臂，海水才到他的腰间。于是，他们继续寻找更深的地方，一路向北，从自在的蝠鲼、胆小的鱿鱼和阴暗中的玫瑰丛上方驶过。最后，欧克利德斯明白了他们是在浪费时间。
Florentino Ariza had learned the route of the galleons from the navigation charts of the period, and he thought he had determined the site of the shipwreck. They left the bay between the two fortresses of Boca Chica, and after four hours of sailing they entered the interior still waters of the archipelago in whose coral depths they could pick up sleeping lobsters with their hands. The air was so soft and the sea so calm and clear that Florentino Ariza felt as if he were his own reflection in the water. At the far end of the backwater, two hours from the largest island, was the site of the shipwreck.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨从当时的航海图上找到船队的路线，并相信自己已经确定了沉船的位置。两人从博卡奇卡的两座碉堡间驶出海湾，航行四个小时后，进入群岛内部的静止水域，水底珊瑚丛中熟睡的龙虾伸手可及。风平浪静，海水清澈见底，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨觉得自己仿佛与水中的倒影合而为一。滞流区的尽头，距最大岛屿两小时航程的地方，就是沉船的位置所在。
“If you don’t tell me what you want me to find, I don’t know how I am going to find it,” he said.
“如果您不告诉我您要找的是什么，我就不会知道怎样才能找到。”他对弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨说。
They wasted three Sundays in this way, and they would have continued to waste them all if Florentino Ariza had not decided to share his secret with Euclides, who then modified the entire search plan, and they sailed along the old channel of the galleons, more than twenty nautical leagues to the east of the spot Florentino Ariza had decided on. Less than two months had gone by when, one rainy afternoon out at sea, Euclides spent considerable time down on the bottom and the canoe drifted so much that he had to swim almost half an hour to reach it because Florentino Ariza could not row it closer to him. When at last he climbed on board, he took two pieces of woman’s jewelry out of his mouth and displayed them as if they were the prize for his perseverance.
他们就这样白白浪费了三个星期日，若非弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨最终决定和欧克利德斯分享他的秘密，他们还会继续浪费掉所有的星期日。这之后，欧克利德斯修改了整个寻宝计划。他们沿着大帆船的古老航线行驶，比弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨预测的地方往东移了二十西班牙海里。不到两个月，在一个海上飘着雨的下午，欧克利德斯潜到水里很久。在这期间，独木船漂出很远，以至于欧克利德斯游了近半个小时才赶上它，因为弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨没能用桨把船划到他那边去。他终于上船之后，从嘴里取出两件女人的首饰，作为坚持不懈的战利品展示给弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨看。
But he did not tell him. Then Euclides proposed to him that he take off his clothes and dive with him, even if it was only to see that other sky below the world, the coral depths. But Florentino Ariza always said that God had made the sea to look at through the window, and he had never learned to swim. A short while later, the afternoon grew cloudy and the air turned cold and damp, and it grew dark with so little warning that they had to navigate by the lighthouse to find the port. Before they entered the bay, the enormous white ocean liner from France passed very close to them, all its lights blazing as it trailed a wake of tender stew and boiled cauliflower.
但弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨还是没有告诉他。于是，欧克利德斯建议他脱掉衣服，下去和他一起找，哪怕就只看看珊瑚丛深处处于世界下方的另一片蓝天也好。可弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨却总说，上帝造海是为了让人们通过窗子去欣赏，再说他也从来没有学过游泳。不久，下午的天空中云多了起来，空气变得阴冷潮湿。天黑得很快，他们靠灯塔才找到港口的方向。驶进海湾之前，他们看见法国的远洋轮船从身边驶过。轮船是白色的，体形巨大，船上灯火辉煌，留下一股柔柔的饭香和煮花椰菜的味道。
What he recounted then was so fascinating that Florentino Ariza promised himself that he would learn to swim and dive as far under water as possible just so he could see it with his own eyes. He said that in that spot, only eighteen meters down, there were so many old sailing ships lying among the coral reefs that it was impossible to even calculate the number, and they were spread over so extensive an area that you could not see to the end of them. He said that the most surprising thing was that none of the old wrecks afloat in the bay was in such good condition as the sunken vessels. He said that there were several caravelles with their sails still intact, and that the sunken ships were visible even on the bottom, for it seemed as if they had sunk along with their own space and time, so that they were still illumined by the same eleven o’clock sun that was shining on Saturday, June 9, when they went down. Choking on the driving force of his imagination, he said that the easiest one to distinguish was the galleon San José, for its name could be seen on the poop in gold letters, but it was also the ship most damaged by English artillery. He said he had seen an octopus inside, more than three centuries old, whose tentacles emerged through the openings in the cannon and who had grown to such a size in the dining room that one would have to destroy the ship to free him. He said he had seen the body of the commander, dressed for battle and floating sideways inside the aquarium of the forecastle, and that if he had not dived down to the hold with all its treasure, it was because he did not have enough air in his lungs. There were the proofs: an emerald earring and a medal of the Virgin, the chain corroded by salt.
接下来他描述的情景是那么令人陶醉，以至于弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨发誓要学会游泳，潜到尽可能深的地方，只为能亲眼证实一下。欧克利德斯说，在那里，在那个只有十八米深的地方，那么多古老的帆船躺在珊瑚丛中，数都数不清。它们分散得很广，一眼望不到边。他说最令人惊讶的是，海湾漂着的那么多散了架的破船中，没有一艘能像海底这些沉船保持得这样完整。他还说，有好多艘三桅帆船甚至连船帆都完好无损，在海底看得清清楚楚，就仿佛它们是连同当日的时空一道沉下去的，照在它们身上的，还是它们沉入大海时那个六月九日星期六上午十一点的阳光。他被自己想象力的激情压得喘不上气来，接着说道，最容易分辨的就是圣何塞号大帆船，它的名字是用金字写在船尾的，看得清清楚楚，但同时，它也是被英国人的大炮打得损伤最严重的船。他说他看见一只足有三百多岁的大章鱼困在船内，触角从各个炮筒里伸出来，它在厨房里长得太大了，要想把它放出来，得先把船拆掉才行。他说，他还看到了身穿军服的船长，身体侧着漂浮在船首楼甲板变成的水箱里。他还说，他之所以没有下到装财宝的船舱，是因为他肺里的空气不够了。但他带回了证据：一只祖母绿耳环，还有一个链子被硝腐蚀了的圣母圣牌。
That was when Florentino Ariza first mentioned the treasure to Fermina Daza in a letter he sent to Fonseca a short while before her return. The history of the sunken galleon was familiar to her because she had heard it many times from Lorenzo Daza, who had lost both time and money trying to convince a company of German divers to join with him in salvaging the sunken treasure. He would have persevered in the enterprise if several members of the Academy of History had not convinced him that the legend of the ship-wrecked galleon had been invented by some brigand of a viceroy to hide his theft of the treasures of the Crown. In any case, Fermina Daza knew that the galleon lay beyond the reach of any human being, at a depth of two hundred meters, not the twenty claimed by Florentino Ariza. But she was so accustomed to his poetic excesses that she celebrated the adventure of the galleon as one of his most successful. Still, when she continued to receive other letters with still more fantastic details, written with as much seriousness as his promises of love, she had to confess to Hildebranda Sánchez her fear that her bedazzled sweetheart must have lost his mind.
也就是在这个时候，在一封寄往丰塞卡镇的信中，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨第一次向费尔明娜·达萨提到了财宝的事，而过不了多久她就要回来了。她对这艘沉船的故事并不陌生，因为她曾多次听洛伦索·达萨提起过。洛伦索·达萨为了说服一家德国潜水公司和他合伙打捞沉没的财宝，曾花费了不少时间和金钱。要不是历史研究院的几位研究员说服了他，告诉他沉船的传说不过是某个穷凶极恶的总督为了侵吞王室的财富而编造出来的故事，他肯定还会对这项事业坚持到底。总之，费尔明娜·达萨知道，大帆船沉在海底两百米的深处，根本没人能够到达，并非弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨所说的二十米。但她已经习惯了他那诗意的夸张，所以也就把这次寻找大帆船的冒险当作他的又一次丰功伟绩祝贺了一番。可当她继续收到写满荒唐细节的来信，见他像书写爱情誓言一般严肃地描绘这些细节时，她不得不向伊尔德布兰达袒露了自己的心事，说她担心自己那位浮想联翩的恋人失去了理智。
The only thing Florentino Ariza salvaged from that disaster was the loving shelter of the lighthouse. He had gone there in Euclides” canoe one night when a storm at sea took them by surprise, and from that time on he would go there in the afternoons to talk to the lighthouse keeper about the innumerable marvels on land and water that the keeper had knowledge of. It was the beginning of a friendship that survived the many changes in the world. Florentino Ariza learned to feed the fire, first with loads of wood and then with large earthen jars of oil, before electrical energy came to us. He learned to direct the light and augment it with mirrors, and orí several occasions, when the lighthouse keeper could not do so, he stayed to keep watch over the night at sea from the tower. He learned to know the ships by their voices, by the size of their lights on the horizon, and to sense that something of them came back to him in the flashing beacon of the lighthouse.
这次受骗给弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨带来的唯一好处，就是找到了灯塔这个爱情的避风港。一天晚上，他们在一望无际的大海上遭遇暴风雨，欧克利德斯用独木船将他载到了这里。从那以后，他便常常在下午来和灯塔看守人聊天，听看守人讲他所知道的那些陆地上和大海里数不尽的奇迹。这是一段将要历经沧海桑田的友谊的开端。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨学会了如何维持灯火不熄，先是用柴火，而后又用油罐子，那时电力的使用还没有传到我们这里。他还学会了如何用镜子引导灯火的方向并增加它的亮度。有几次，灯塔看守人有事不能看管灯塔，他便留下来，在塔上整夜注视着大海。他学会了利用声音和船上灯光映在地平线上影子的大小来辨别船只，还学会了在灯塔闪动的光亮中分辨船只给他发回的信号。
During this time Euclides had surfaced with so many proofs of his tale that it was no longer a question of playing with earrings and rings scattered amid the coral but of financing a major enterprise to salvage the fifty ships with their cargo of Babylonian treasure. Then what had to happen sooner or later happened: Florentino Ariza asked his mother for help in bringing his adventure to a successful conclusion. All she had to do was bite the metal settings and look at the gems made of glass against the light to realize that someone was taking advantage of her son’s innocence. Euclides went down on his knees and swore to Florentino Ariza that he had done nothing wrong, but he was not seen the following Sunday in the fishermen’s port, or anywhere else ever again.
就在那些日子里，欧克利德斯又捞出了许多件能够证明他所编织的神话的证据，两人已经不仅仅满足于为那些散落在珊瑚丛中的耳环和戒指欢呼雀跃了，而是计划要筹钱建立一家大公司，打捞那五十多艘船上的巴比伦宝藏。于是，迟早都要发生的事情发生了。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨向母亲求助，希望她帮助自己完成这项冒险。而母亲只是咬了咬那些首饰上的金属，又对着阳光看了看那些玻璃块，就明白了有人想利用她儿子的天真发财。欧克利德斯跪在地上对弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨发誓说自己没做过任何骗人的勾当。但接下来的星期日，他就没在渔港露面，以后也再没在别的地方出现过。
During the day, above all on Sundays, there was another kind of pleasure. In the District of the Viceroys, where the wealthy people of the old city lived, the women’s beaches were separated from those of the men by a plaster wall: one lay to the right and the other to the left of the lighthouse. And so the lighthouse keeper installed a spyglass through which one could contemplate the women’s beach by paying a centavo. Without knowing they were being observed, the young society ladies displayed themselves to the best of their ability in ruffled bathing suits and slippers and hats that hid their bodies almost as much as their street clothes did and were less attractive besides. Their mothers, sitting out in the sun in wicker rocking chairs, wearing the same dresses, the same feathered hats, and holding the same organdy parasols as they had at High Mass, watched over them from the shore, for fear the men from the neighboring beaches would seduce their daughters under the water. The reality was that one could not see anything more, or anything more exciting, through the spyglass than one could see on the street, but there were many clients who came every Sunday to wrangle over the telescope for the pure delight of tasting the insipid forbidden fruits of the walled area that was denied them.
白天，特别是星期日，还有另一种乐趣。在老城的富人们居住的总督区，女人使用的海滩和男人的海滩是由一堵石灰墙分开的：女人的在灯塔之右，而男人的在左边。于是，灯塔看守人在塔上架起了一台望远镜，只要花上一个生太伏，就能用望远镜观赏一下女人的海滩。那些上流社会的小姐们不知道自己正被人偷窥，只管穿着宽荷叶边的泳衣，脚踩着拖鞋，头顶着宽檐帽，尽情地展现着身姿。这副装扮将她们的身体遮掩得像上街时穿的衣服一样严实，却又不像那些衣服那样迷人。母亲们则坐在烈日下的藤条摇椅上，穿得和望大弥撒时一样，同样的衣服，同样的羽毛帽子，也打着同样的绢制遮阳伞，在岸边注视着女儿们，生怕隔壁海滩上的男人从水下引诱她们。事实上，从望远镜里看到的并不比在街上看到的更多、更刺激，但每个星期日赶来这里的客人还是很多，他们争先恐后地抢着望远镜，只为一饱眼福，享受一下围墙那边枯燥乏味的禁果。
None of these dreams was in vain, however. The tale of the galleon and the novelty of the lighthouse helped to alleviate the absence of Fermina Daza, and then, when he least expected it, he received the news of her return. And in fact, after a prolonged stay in Riohacha, Lorenzo Daza had decided to come home. It was not the most benign season on the ocean, due to the December trade winds, and the historic schooner, the only one that would risk the crossing, might find itself blown by a contrary wind back to the port where it had started. And that is what happened. Fermina Daza spent an agonized night vomiting bile, strapped to her bunk in a cabin that resembled a tavern latrine not only because of its oppressive narrowness but also because of the pestilential stench and the heat. The motion was so strong that she had the impression several times that the straps on the bed would fly apart; on the deck she heard fragments of shouted lamentations that sounded like a shipwreck, and her father’s tigerish snoring in the next bunk added yet another ingredient to her terror. For the first time in almost three years she spent an entire night awake without thinking for even one moment of Florentino Ariza, while he, on the other hand, lay sleepless in his hammock in the back room, counting the eternal minutes one by one until her return. At dawn the wind suddenly died down and the sea grew calm, and Fermina Daza realized that she had slept despite her devastating seasickness, because the noise of the anchor chains awakened her. Then she loosened the straps and went to the porthole, hoping to see Florentino Ariza in the tumult of the port, but all she saw were the customs sheds among the palm trees gilded by the first rays of the sun and the rotting boards of the dock in Riohacha, where the schooner had set sail the night before.
但这些幻想并非全是徒劳。无论是沉船的传说，还是后来对灯塔的兴趣，都帮他减轻了见不到费尔明娜·达萨的相思之苦。而就在他最意想不到的时候，传来了费尔明娜·达萨即将归来的消息。原来，在里奥阿查待了相当长的一段时间后，洛伦索·达萨决定回家。十二月正值信风季，并非风平浪静的时节，那艘唯一敢于冒险出海的老旧轻便船，很可能一夜间又被逆风拖回到出发的港口。而事实果真如此。费尔明娜·达萨度过了苦不堪言的一宿，她把自己绑在舱室的床铺上，把胆汁都吐出来了。那间舱室简直就像小酒馆的茅厕，不仅因为它狭小压抑的空间，更因为里面的恶臭和闷热。船摇晃得那么厉害，好几次她都觉得床上的皮带就要断裂了。甲板上不时传来一阵阵像遭遇了海难似的惨叫声，而父亲在隔壁床上发出的老虎般的鼾声更加重了恐怖的气氛。近三年来，这还是她第一个片刻也不曾想到弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的不眠之夜。而此刻，他正躺在杂货铺里间的吊床上辗转难眠，一分钟一分钟地数着她回来前的时间，仿佛每一分钟都是永恒。天亮时，风突然停了，海面又恢复了平静，费尔明娜·达萨发现自己尽管饱受晕船之苦，但最终还是睡着了，因为她是被锚链丁零当啷的巨大响声吵醒的。于是，她解开床上的皮带，凑到舷窗前向外张望，幻想着能在港口躁动的人群中发现弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨的身影，但她看到的却是被第一缕阳光染成金黄色的棕榈树丛中的海关仓库，以及里奥阿查那用腐朽的木板钉成的码头，而他们的船前一天晚上正是从这里起锚的。
Florentino Ariza was one of them, more from boredom than for pleasure, but it was not because of that additional attraction that he became a good friend of the lighthouse keeper. The real reason was that after Fermina Daza rejected him, when he contracted the fever of many disparate loves in his effort to replace her, it was in the lighthouse and nowhere else that he lived his happiest hours and found the best consolation for his misfortunes. It was the place he loved most, so much so that for years he tried to convince his mother, and later his Uncle Leo XII, to help him buy it. For in those days the lighthouses in the Caribbean were private property, and their owners charged ships according to their size for the right to enter the port. Florentino Ariza thought that it was the only honorable way to make a profit out of poetry, but neither his mother nor his uncle agreed with him, and by the time he had the resources to do it on his own, the lighthouses had become the property of the state.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨也是这些人中的一个，与其说他是为了寻找乐子，不如说是因为无聊。但他和灯塔看守人结交，并不是因为这个额外的诱惑。真正的原因是，自从费尔明娜·达萨对他失去了爱慕，而他开始狂热地寻花问柳以取代她的时候，没有一处地方让他觉得比在灯塔里的分分秒秒更加快乐，或能找到更好的安慰来抚平自己的痛楚。这里是他最喜欢的地方。他甚至花了很多年求母亲，而后又求他的叔叔莱昂十二[8]，求他们帮他买下灯塔。那个时候，加勒比地区的灯塔是私人财产，灯塔主人根据船只的体积来收取入港税。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨认为那是唯一一种能够靠诗情画意营生的体面方式。可他的母亲和叔叔都不这么看。当他终于可以靠自己的财富这样做时，灯塔却又成了国家的财产。（注：[8] 教皇“利奥十二世”在西班牙语中的叫法。）
The rest of the day was like a hallucination: she was in the same house where she had been until yesterday, receiving the same visitors who had said goodbye to her, talking about the same things, bewildered by the impression that she was reliving a piece of life she had already lived. It was such a faithful repetition that Fermina Daza trembled at the thought that the schooner trip would be a repetition, too, for the mere memory of it terrified her. However, the only other possible means of returning home was two weeks on muleback over the mountains in circumstances even more dangerous than the first time, since a new civil war that had begun in the Andean state of Cauca was spreading throughout the Caribbean provinces. And so at eight o’clock that night she was once again accompanied to the port by the same troop of noisy relatives shedding the same tears of farewell and with the same jumble of last-minute gifts and packages that did not fit in the cabins. When it was time to sail, the men in the family saluted the schooner with a volley of shots fired into the air, and Lorenzo Daza responded from the deck with five shots from his revolver. Fermina Daza’s fears dissipated because the wind was favorable all night, and there was a scent of flowers at sea that helped her to sleep soundly without the safety straps. She dreamed that she was seeing Florentino Ariza again, and that he took off the face that she had always seen on him because in fact it was a mask, but his real face was identical to the false one. She got up very early, intrigued by the enigma of the dream, and she found her father drinking mountain coffee with brandy in the captain’s bar, his eye twisted by alcohol, but he did not show the slightest hint of uncertainty regarding their return.
当天余下的时间就如幻觉。她又一次待在一直住到前一天的房子里，接待了同一拨来向她告别的客人，说着同样的话。她恍惚觉得，自己在重复一个已经度过的生活片段。这种重复是那么的彻底，而一想到乘船旅行也将如此重复，费尔明娜·达萨颤抖起来：单是回想一下船上的情景就让她不寒而栗了。但要想回家，唯一一个不同的选择就是骑在骡子上沿着悬崖峭壁走上两个星期，而且情况会比来时更加危险，因为在安第斯山考卡省爆发的一场新内战正在加勒比各省蔓延。于是晚上八点，她又一次被同一拨喧喧嚷嚷的亲戚送至港口。他们挥着同样的告别眼泪，在最后时刻送上了那同一批大包小包七零八碎、舱室里塞都塞不下的礼物。起锚时，家里的男人们朝天开了几枪，为帆船送行。洛伦索·达萨则站在甲板上，用他的左轮手枪打了五枪作为回应。费尔明娜·达萨的忧虑很快便烟消云散了，因为整晚都是顺风。大海散发着一股花香，这甚至让她没有系上安全皮带，就恬然入梦了。她梦见自己又见到了弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨，梦见他竟然摘掉了她一直以来看到的那副面孔，原来那是一只面具，但他真实的面孔又和那面具一模一样。她很早便起床了，因为这个梦中的谜团让她大惑不解。她看见父亲正坐在船长的饭厅里，喝着兑了白兰地的不加糖的浓咖啡。由于酒精的作用，他的眼睛又斜了，但没有流露出对这次回家的丝毫顾虑。
They were coming into port. The schooner slipped in silence through the labyrinth of sailing ships anchored in the cove of the public market whose stench could be smelled several leagues out to sea, and the dawn was saturated by a steady drizzle that soon broke into a full-fledged downpour. Standing watch on the balcony of the telegraph office, Florentino Ariza recognized the schooner, its sails disheartened by the rain, as it crossed Las Ánimas Bay and anchored at the market pier. The morning before, he had waited until eleven o’clock, when he learned through a casual telegram of the contrary winds that had delayed the schooner, and on this day he had returned to his vigil at four o’clock in the morning. He continued to wait, not taking his eyes off the launch that carried ashore the few passengers who had decided to disembark despite the storm. Halfway across, the launch ran aground, and most of them had to abandon ship and splash through the mud to the pier. At eight o’clock, after they had waited in vain for the rain to stop, a black stevedore in water up to his waist received Fermina Daza at the rail of the schooner and carried her ashore in his arms, but she was so drenched that Florentino Ariza did not recognize her.
他们驶进港来。轻便船在公共市场港湾里停泊的那些小船组成的迷宫中静静滑行。市场散发的臭味在几里外的海上就能闻到。晨曦在清澈的蒙蒙细雨中显得格外饱满，可小雨很快变成了瓢泼大雨。守候在电报室阳台上的弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨，在轻便船驶入灵魂湾的那一刻就认出了它，船帆被雨水打得耷拉下来，船在市场码头下了锚。前一天，他一直等到上午十一点，才从一份电报中偶然得知船因为逆风而延误了。于是，他又从第二天的凌晨四点起开始等待。此刻，他的眼睛始终不离那一艘艘运送旅客的小船。它们负责把少数不顾暴风雨而决定上岸的旅客送至岸边，可最后，他们中的大部分都不得不在中途走下搁浅的小船，蹚着泥泞攀上码头。船中的客人一直徒劳地等到八点钟，雨还是没有停。一个黑人搬运工蹚着齐腰深的水走到船舷上把费尔明娜·达萨接了下来，一直把她抱到岸上。但她浑身上下湿得就像落汤鸡，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨竟然没有认出她来。
“I turn over to you the keys to your life,” he said.
“我把你生活的钥匙交给你。”他对她说。
She herself was not aware of how much she had matured during the trip until she walked into her closed house and at once undertook the heroic task of making it livable again with the help of Gala Placidia, the black servant who came back from her old slave quarters as soon as she was told of their return. Fermina Daza was no longer the only child, both spoiled and tyrannized by her father, but the lady and mistress of an empire of dust and cobwebs that could be saved only by the strength of invincible love. She was not intimidated because she felt herself inspired by an exalted courage that would have enabled her to move the world. The very night of their return, while they were having hot chocolate and crullers at the large kitchen table, her father delegated to her the authority to run the house, and he did so with as much formality as if it were a sacred rite.
她自己也没有意识到，在这次旅行中她竟成熟了那么多——直到踏入家门的那一刻。她一走进大门紧闭的房子，便立刻在黑人女仆的帮助下，开始了让房屋恢复生气的壮举。黑人女仆名叫加拉·普拉西迪娅，刚一接到他们即将归来的消息，就从她那古老的奴隶住所赶了回来。费尔明娜·达萨已经不再是那个既受父亲宠爱又受他严加管束的独生女了，而变成了这个满是尘土和蛛网的王国真正的女主人。如今，只有不可战胜的爱的力量，才能拯救这个王国。她没有气馁，因为她感到自己受到一股升腾的勇气的召唤，足以撼动这个世界。回家当晚，他们在厨房的餐桌上喝热巧克力、吃奶酪饼的时候，父亲把管理家务的大权交给了她，那么郑重其事，就像进行神圣的宗教仪式一般。
She, with all of her seventeen years behind her, accepted with a firm hand, conscious that every inch of liberty she won was for the sake of love. The next day, after a night of bad dreams, she suffered her first sense of displeasure at being home when she opened the balcony window and saw again the sad drizzle in the little park, the statue of the decapitated hero, the marble bench where Florentino Ariza used to sit with his book of verses. She no longer thought of him as the impossible sweetheart but as the certain husband to whom she belonged heart and soul. She felt the heavy weight of the time they had lost while she was away, she felt how hard it was to be alive and how much love she was going to need to love her man as God demanded. She was surprised that he was not in the little park, as he had been so many times despite the rain, and that she had received no sign of any kind from him, not even a premonition, and she was shaken by the sudden idea that he had died. But she put aside the evil thought at once, for in the recent frenzy of telegrams regarding her imminent return they had forgotten to agree on a way to continue communicating once she was home.
年满十七岁的她坚定地接过这个权力。她知道，她所赢得的每一分自由都是为了爱。这一夜，噩梦连连。第二天，她打开阳台的窗子，又看见小花园中伤感的蒙蒙细雨、那尊被斩首的英雄塑像，还有弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨拿着诗集常坐的那条大理石长凳，她第一次感到回家的惆怅。她已经不再把他当作一个遥不可及的恋人，而是当作可以托付一切的确定无疑的丈夫来想念。她突然感到，自己走后，二人所虚度的光阴是多么的沉重漫长，活下来又是多么的艰辛不易，而她又该付出多少爱，去按照上帝的旨意爱这个属于她的男人啊。可她惊讶地发现，他并不在小花园，不像以前很多次那样，即使下雨也会出现在那里。她发现自己没有通过任何渠道接到他的任何信息，甚至一点征兆都没有。突然间，一个念头令她浑身一颤：他死了。但随即，她又排除了这个坏念头，因为在最后几天狂热的电报往来中，他们的确是忘了商定一种她回来以后能继续保持联系的方式。
The truth is that Florentino Ariza was sure she had not returned, until the telegraph operator in Riohacha confirmed that they had embarked on Friday aboard the very same schooner that did not arrive the day before because of contrary winds, so that during the weekend he watched for any sign of life in her house, and at dusk on Monday he saw through the windows a light that moved through the house and was extinguished, a little after nine, in the bedroom with the balcony. He did not sleep, victim to the same fearful nausea that had disturbed his first nights of love. Tránsito Ariza arose with the first roosters, alarmed that her son had gone out to the patio at midnight and had not yet come back inside, and she did not find him in the ho use. He had gone to wander along the jetties, reciting love poetry into the wind and crying with joy until daybreak. At eight o’clock he was sitting under the arches of the Parish Café, delirious with fatigue, trying to think of how to send his welcome to Fermina Daza, when he felt himself shaken by a seismic tremor that tore his heart.
事实上，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨十分肯定地以为她还没有回来，直到里奥阿查的电报员向他证实她星期五就上船了，并且就是那艘前一天因逆风而没有到达的轻便船。于是周末时，他守在她家门口，注视着里面的动静。而星期一，从傍晚开始，他便透过窗子看见一盏灯火在阳台所在的那间卧室里来回移动，九点刚过就又熄灭了。他一夜没睡，而是受着和恋爱之初的夜晚同样的煎熬，紧张得直想呕吐。特兰西多·阿里萨在早上第一拨公鸡打鸣时就起了床。她被吓慌了，因为儿子自从半夜走进院子就再没回来，而她在家里也没有找到他。原来，他一直在防波堤上徘徊，迎着风背诵爱情诗，高兴得流泪，直到天明。八点钟，他坐在教区咖啡馆的拱廊下，因彻夜未眠而精神恍惚，正想着用一种什么样的方式来向费尔明娜·达萨表示欢迎。就在这时，他感到地动山摇，浑身一震，五脏六腑都要碎了。
He followed her without letting himself be seen, watching the ordinary gestures, the grace, the premature maturity of the being he loved most in the world and whom he was seeing for the first time in her natural state. He was amazed by the fluidity with which she made her way through the crowd. While Gala Placidia bumped into people and became entangled in her baskets and had to run to keep up with her, she navigated the disorder of the street in her own time and space, not colliding with anyone, like a bat in the darkness. She had often been to the market with her Aunt Escolástica, but they made only minor purchases, since her father himself took charge of provisioning the household, not only with furniture and food but even with women’s clothing. So this first excursion was for her a fascinating adventure idealized in her girlhood dreams.
他紧跟着她，却不让她发现，一路观察着世界上他最爱的这个人的举手投足，她的优雅，她的早熟。这是他第一次看到她无拘无束的样子。他惊讶地看着她自如地穿行于人群之中，而加拉·普拉西迪娅却东碰西撞，手中的篮子钩来刮去，不得不一路小跑才跟得上她。她在混乱的大街上穿梭，自由自在，不曾与任何人相撞，就像在黑暗中飞翔的蝙蝠。她曾多次和埃斯科拉斯蒂卡姑妈来到市场，但从来只是买一些小玩意儿，因为那时父亲亲自负责家中的采购，不单包括家具和食品，甚至还包括女人的衣服。所以，这第一次出门采买，对她来说是在童年的梦想中便一再憧憬过的神奇冒险。
It was she, crossing the Plaza of the Cathedral, accompanied by Gala Placidia who was carrying the baskets for their marketing, and for the first time she was not wearing her school uniform. She was taller than when she had left, more polished and intense, her beauty purified by the restraint of maturity. Her braid had grown in, but instead of letting it hang down her back she wore it twisted over her left shoulder, and that simple change had erased all girlish traces from her. Florentino Ariza sat bedazzled until the child of his vision had crossed the plaza, looking to neither the left nor the right. But then the same irresistible power that had paralyzed him obliged him to hurry after her when she turned the corner of the Cathedral and was lost in the deafening noise of the market’s rough cobblestones.
是她。她正穿过大教堂广场，加拉·普拉西迪娅手里提着买东西的篮子陪伴着她。这是她第一次没有穿校服出门。她比离开时长高了，线条更加分明，身材更加丰盈，一种成熟的矜持使她的美更为纯净。她的发辫又长出来了，但不是披在后背，而是斜搭在左肩上，这个简单的变化让她脱去了少女的稚气。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨目瞪口呆地坐在那里，直到这个宛如梦幻的姑娘目不斜视地穿过广场。接着，那股使他浑身酥软动弹不得的不可抗拒的力量，又迫使他跟在她后面追了上去。而这时，她已经拐过教堂边的街角，混入市场喧闹嘈杂的人群中。
She paid no attention to the urgings of the snake charmers who offered her a syrup for eternal love, or to the pleas of the beggars lying in doorways with their running sores, or to the false Indian who tried to sell her a trained alligator. She made a long and detailed tour with no planned itinerary, stopping with no other motive than her unhurried delight in the spirit of things. She entered every doorway where there was something for sale, and everywhere she found something that increased her desire to live. She relished the aroma of vetiver in the cloth in the great chests, she wrapped herself in embossed silks, she laughed at her own laughter when she saw herself in the full-length mirror in The Golden Wire disguised as a woman from Madrid, with a comb in her hair and a fan painted with flowers. In the store that sold imported foods she lifted the lid of a barrel of pickled herring that reminded her of nights in the northeast when she was a very little girl in San Juan de la Ciénaga. She sampled an Alicante sausage that tasted of licorice, and she bought two for Saturday’s breakfast, as well as some slices of cod and a jar of red currants in aguardiente. In the spice shop she crushed leaves of sage and oregano in the palms of her hands for the pure pleasure of smelling them, and bought a handful of cloves, another of star anise, and one each of ginger root and juniper, and she walked away with tears of laughter in her eyes because the smell of the cayenne pepper made her sneeze so much. In the French cosmetics shop, as she was buying Reuter soaps and balsam water, they put a touch of the latest perfume from Paris behind her ear and gave her a breath tablet to use after smoking.
她没有理会耍蛇人向她兜售永葆爱情的糖浆时的那番饶舌，也没有理睬躺在别人大门前浑身长癞流脓的乞丐的恳求，更没有搭理试图把一条受过训练的鳄鱼卖给她的假印第安人。她走得很远，逛得很仔细，但漫无目的，每一次停下来，都仅仅是因为她喜欢不慌不忙地欣赏每一件东西的灵魂。只要有点儿东西卖的门廊，她都要走进去看看，而每到一处，她都能找出点儿什么来增添她对生活的渴望。她兴高采烈地闻着大木箱里呢料散发出的香根草的味道；她把印花的丝绸裹在身上；她戴上压发梳，拿起花扇，在“金丝”商店的全身穿衣镜里看着自己扮成马德里妇女的模样，忍不住笑起来，接着，又被自己的笑逗得哈哈大笑。在进口食品店，她打开一桶卤汁鲱鱼，这让她想起自己还是个小姑娘时，在东北部的圣胡安·德拉希耶纳加度过的那些夜晚。她又尝了尝带甘草味的阿利坎特血肠，买了两根作为星期六的早餐，还买了几片鳕鱼肉和一罐酒浸红醋栗。在调料店，她用两个手掌揉碎了几瓣鼠尾草和牛至叶，纯粹是为了闻味儿，还买了一把丁香和一把大料，一小包姜和一小包刺柏。走出来时，由于被卡宴的胡椒呛得直打喷嚏，她笑得满脸泪水。在法国药店，当她试用路特香皂和安息香液的时候，售货员在她耳后喷了一揿巴黎正流行的香水，还给了她一片吸烟后用的祛味剂。
Florentino Ariza spied on her in astonishment, he pursued her breathlessly, he tripped several times over the baskets of the maid who responded to his excuses with a smile, and she passed so close to him that he could smell her scent, and if she did not see him then it was not because she could not but because of the haughty manner in which she walked. To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else’s heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell. Nevertheless, when she entered the riotous noise of the Arcade of the Scribes, he realized that he might lose the moment he had craved for so many years.
弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨惊奇地窥视着她，跟在她身后气喘吁吁，好几次都撞到了女仆的篮子上，对他的道歉，女仆回以微笑。她和他擦肩而过，距离如此之近，他闻到了她身上的一阵芳香。如果说她那时并没有看到他，可不是因为她无法看到，而实在是因为她那傲视一切的走路方式。他觉得她是那么美，那么迷人，那么与众不同，所以不能理解为何没有人像他一样，为她的鞋跟踩在路砖上那响板似的美妙声音而神魂颠倒，也没有人像他那样被她裙摆的窸窸窣窣弄得心怦怦乱跳，为何全世界的人没有因她那飘逸的发辫、轻盈的手臂和金子般的笑声而爱得发狂。他没有错过她的一颦一笑，也没有错过她那高贵品行的任何一点展现，但他不敢走近她，害怕扼杀这样如痴如醉的感觉。然而，当她钻进鱼龙混杂的“代笔人门廊”时，他意识到自己正在铤而走险，眼看就要失去几年来梦寐以求的机会。
She played at buying, it is true, but what she really needed she bought without hesitation, with an authority that allowed no one to think that she was doing so for the first time, for she was conscious that she was buying not only for herself but for him as well: twelve yards of linen for their table, percale for the marriage sheets that by dawn would be damp with moisture from both their bodies, the most exquisite of everything for both of them to enjoy in the house of love. She asked for discounts and she got them, she argued with grace and dignity until she obtained the best, and she paid with pieces of gold that the shopkeepers tested for the sheer pleasure of hearing them sing against the marble counters.
她是在边买边玩，的确如此，但对于那些真正需要的东西，她会毫不迟疑地买下来。那股当机立断的劲头让人绝对想不到这是她第一次买东西。她知道，她不只是在为自己买，也是在为他买。她买下了十二码亚麻布，用来为两人做台布；一块细棉布，用来做新婚之夜的床单，天亮时上面会浸染上两人幸福的气息。每一件精美的物品，他们都将在他们的爱巢共同享用。她讨价还价，且十分在行。她优雅而又不失尊贵地议价，最后总能赢得最大的优惠。她用金币付账，店主们假装检验真伪，其实只是为了听听金币落在大理石柜台上那悦耳的声音。
Fermina Daza shared with her schoolmates the singular idea that the Arcade of the Scribes was a place of perdition that was forbidden, of course, to decent young ladies. It was an arcaded gallery across from a little plaza where carriages and freight carts drawn by donkeys were for hire, where popular commerce became noisier and more dense. The name dated from colonial times, when the taciturn scribes in their vests and false cuffs first began to sit there, waiting for a poor man’s fee to write all kinds of documents: memoranda of complaints or petition, legal testimony, cards of congratulation or condolence, love letters appropriate to any stage in an affair. They, of course, were not the ones who had given that thundering market its bad reputation but more recent peddlers who made illegal sales of all kinds of questionable merchandise smuggled in on European ships, from obscene postcards and aphrodisiac ointments to the famous Catalonian condoms with iguana crests that fluttered when circumstances required or with flowers at the tip that would open their petals at the will of the user. Fermina Daza, somewhat unskilled in the customs of the street, went through the Arcade without noticing where she was going as she searched for a shady refuge from the fierce eleven o’clock sun.
费尔明娜·达萨赞同她的女同学们的古怪看法，认为“代笔人门廊”是个堕落淫荡、藏污纳垢的地方，自然，是对那些体面的小姐们而言。那是一个有很多拱门的长廊，对面是一个小广场，停着可供出租的马车和驴子拉的大车，老百姓的生意做得如火如荼，热热闹闹。“代笔人门廊”这个名字起源于殖民时期，因为从那时起，那些穿着呢子背心、戴着套袖的沉默寡言的书法家们就坐在这里，以低廉的价格代人写就各种文书：受屈或申诉的诉状，法庭证词，贺帖，悼词，以及各种年龄阶段的情书。当然，这个喧闹市场的坏名声并非来自这些代笔先生，而是来自后来出现的小商小贩。他们在柜台底下出售由欧洲船走私来的假货，从淫秽下流的明信片、春药油膏到著名的加泰罗尼亚避孕套，应有尽有。那种避孕套有的装着鬣蜥身上的鬣毛，到时候可以撩动心房；还有的在末端饰有花朵，花瓣可以按照使用者的意愿张开。费尔明娜·达萨并不熟悉这条街道的风俗，为了找一处阴凉来避一避十一点钟火辣辣的太阳，她走进了门廊，根本没留意自己来到了什么地方。
She sank into the hot clamor of the shoeshine boys and the bird sellers, the hawkers of cheap books and the witch doctors and the sellers of sweets who shouted over the din of the crowd: pineapple sweets for your sweetie, coconut candy is dandy, brown-sugar loaf for your sugar. But, indifferent to the uproar, she was captivated on the spot by a paper seller who was demonstrating magic inks, red inks with an ambience of blood, inks of sad aspect for messages of condolence, phosphorescent inks for reading in the dark, invisible inks that revealed themselves in the light. She wanted all of them so she could amuse Florentino Ariza and astound him with her wit, but after several trials she decided on a bottle of gold ink. Then she went to the candy sellers sitting behind their big round jars and she bought six of each kind, pointing at the glass because she could not make herself heard over all the shouting: six angel hair, six tinned milk, six sesame seed bars, six cassava pastries, six chocolate bars, six blancmanges, six tidbits of the queen, six of this and six of that, six of everything, and she tossed them into the maid’s baskets with an irresistible grace and a complete detachment from the stormclouds of flies on the syrup, from the continual hullabaloo and the vapor of rancid sweat that reverberated in the deadly heat. She was awakened from the spell by a good-natured black woman with a colored cloth around her head who was round and handsome and offered her a triangle of pineapple speared on the tip of a butcher’s knife. She took it, she put it whole into her mouth, she tasted it, and was chewing it as her eyes wandered over the crowd, when a sudden shock rooted her on the spot. Behind her, so close to her ear that only she could hear it in the tumult, she heard his voice:
瞬时间，她被淹没在一片叽里呱啦的火热叫卖声中，有擦鞋匠、卖鸟人、二手书商、江湖郎中，还有卖甜食的女人。其中，卖甜食的女人们的吆喝声力压众人，她们大声叫卖着姑娘们爱吃的菠萝酥，疯子爱吃的椰子饼和小甜心米卡拉爱吃的红糖糕。可她对这些嘈乱的嚷声无动于衷，因为她一下子就被那个卖文具的吸引住了。那人正在演示各种具有魔力的神奇墨水，有像血一样鲜红的红墨水，有透着一股悲伤的写悼文用的墨水，还有便于在黑暗中阅读的磷光墨水，以及只有灯照下才能看得见的隐形墨水。她本来打算各种墨水都买一点儿，好同弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨闹着玩儿，用自己的天才吓他一跳。但她试了好几种之后，决定只买一小瓶金色墨水。随后，她走到那些坐在一排大罐子后面的卖甜食的女人面前，每样买了六块。她用手一一指着玻璃罐中的甜食，因为在嘈杂声中根本无法让她们听见自己在说什么：六块天使发丝饼，六块炼乳饼，六块芝麻糕，六块木薯夹心酥，六块魔鬼巧克力饼，六块奶油卷，六块王后乳酪糕，六块这个，六块那个，每样六块。她用一种令人难以抵御的优雅把这些糕点一一扔进女仆的篮子，全然没有理会叮在糕点上的密密麻麻的苍蝇，周围不绝于耳的嘈杂声，以及在那要命的酷热中闪烁的腐臭汗珠所发出的蒸蒸热气。一个头上包着花头巾、圆润而漂亮的黑人妇女，满面笑容地递给她一角插在刀上的菠萝块，令她从陶醉中清醒过来。她取下菠萝块，整个放进嘴里，一边细细品尝着，一边把目光扫向周围的人群。突然，一个晴天霹雳将她定在了那里。在她背后，嘈杂之中一个唯有她能够听见的声音在她耳边响起：
“This is not the place for a crowned goddess.”
“这可不是花冠女神该来的地方。”
She turned her head and saw, a hand’s breadth from her eyes, those other glacial eyes, that livid face, those lips petrified with fear, just as she had seen them in the crowd at Midnight Mass the first time he was so close to her, but now, instead of the commotion of love, she felt the abyss of disenchantment. In an instant the magnitude of her own mistake was revealed to her, and she asked herself, appalled, how she could have nurtured such a chimera in her heart for so long and with so much ferocity. She just managed to think: My God, poor man! Florentino Ariza smiled, tried to say something, tried to follow her, but she erased him from her life with a wave of her hand.
她回过头，在距离自己的双眼两拃远的地方，她看见了他那冰冷的眼睛、青紫色的面庞和因爱情的恐惧而变得僵硬的双唇。他离她那么近，就像在子时弥撒躁动的人群中看到他的那次一样。但与那时不同，此刻她没有感到爱情的震撼，而是坠入了失望的深渊。在那一瞬间，她恍然大悟，原来自己对自己撒了一个弥天大谎。她惊慌地自问，怎么会如此残酷地让那样一个幻影在自己的心间占据了那么长时间。她只想出了一句话：“我的上帝啊！这个可怜的人！”弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨冲她笑了笑，试图对她说点什么，想跟她一起走，但她挥了挥手，把他从自己的生活中抹掉了——
“No, please,” she said to him. “Forget it.”
“不，请别这样。”她对他说，“忘了吧。”
That afternoon, while her father was taking his siesta, she sent Gala Placidia with a two-line letter: “Today, when I saw you, I realized that what is between us is nothing more than an illusion.” The maid also returned his telegrams, his verses, his dry camellias, and asked him to send back her letters and gifts, Aunt Escolástica’s missal, the veins of leaves from her herbariums, the square centimeter of the habit of St. Peter Clavier, the saints” medals, the braid of her fifteenth year tied with the silk ribbon of her school uniform. In the days that followed, on the verge of madness, he wrote her countless desperate letters and besieged the maid to take them to her, but she obeyed her unequivocal instructions not to accept anything but the returned gifts. She insisted with so much zeal that Florentino Ariza sent them all back except the braid, which he would return only to Fermina Daza in person so they could talk, if just for a moment. But she refused. Fearing a decision fatal to her son, Tránsito Ariza swallowed her pride and asked Fermina Daza to grant her the favor of five minutes of her time, and Fermina Daza received her for a moment in the doorway of her house, not asking her to sit down, not asking her to come in, and without the slightest trace of weakening. Two days later, after an argument with his mother, Florentino Ariza took down from the wall of his room the stained-glass case where he displayed the braid as if it were a holy relic, and Tránsito Ariza herself returned it in the velvet box embroidered with gold thread. Florentino Ariza never had another opportunity to see or talk to Fermina Daza alone in the many chance encounters of their very long lives until fifty-one years and nine months and four days later, when he repeated his vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love on her first night as a widow.
那天下午，父亲睡午觉的时候，她交给加拉·普拉西迪娅一封只有两行字的信：今天，见到您时，我发现我们之间不过是一场幻觉。女仆还给他带去了他的电报、他的诗和他送的已经风干了的山茶花，并要求他归还她曾送给他的信件和礼物：埃斯科拉斯蒂卡姑妈的那本弥撒经书，植物叶脉标本，一平方厘米大小的圣佩德罗·克拉维尔的教士服布料，几块圣牌，还有她那条系着校服配套丝带的十五岁时的发辫。在接下来的日子里，他濒临疯狂，给她写了无数封绝望的信，缠着女仆带给她。但女仆坚决执行女主人斩钉截铁的指示：不接收除归还的礼物以外的任何物品。在女仆的再三坚持下，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨把所有东西都还给了她，只除了发辫。他不会归还发辫，除非费尔明娜·达萨亲自来拿，并和他谈上哪怕片刻的时间。但他的愿望没有达成。特兰西多·阿里萨担心儿子会做出什么不可挽回的冲动决定，放下自己的骄傲，去恳求费尔明娜·达萨开恩给她五分钟的时间。费尔明娜·达萨在家中的前厅站着接待了她，只花了一小会儿工夫，甚至没有请她进去，更没有表现出丝毫软弱。过了两天，在同母亲吵了一架后，弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨从他卧室的墙上取下了那个落满灰尘的玻璃龛，里面像供奉圣人遗物似的供奉着那条发辫。特兰西多·阿里萨把它装进那只绣有金线的天鹅绒盒子，亲自还了回去。弗洛伦蒂诺·阿里萨再没有机会单独见过费尔明娜·达萨，在他们漫长一生的几次相遇中，也再没有单独和她说过话，直到五十一年九个月零四天之后，她成为寡妇的第一个晚上，他才再一次向她重申自己对她永恒的忠诚和不渝的爱情。
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