百年孤独这本书怎么样 世纪文学经典:《百年孤独》第18章Part3

世纪文学经典:《百年孤独》第18章Part3  

When she heard about the flight
Fernanda ranted for a whole day as she checked trunks
dressers
and closets
item by item
to make sure that Santa Sofía de la Piedad had not made off with anything. She burned her fingers trying to light a fire for the first time in her life and she had to ask Aureliano to do her the favor of showing her how to make coffee. Fernanda would find her breakfast ready when she arose and she would leave her room again only to get the meal that Aureliano had left covered on the embers for her
which she would carry to the table to eat on linen tablecloths and beeen candelabra
sitting at the solitary head of the table facing fifteen empty chairs. Even under those circumstances Aureliano and Fernanda did not share their solitude
but both continued living on their own
cleaning their respective rooms while the cobwebs fell like snow on the rose bushes
carpeted the beams
cushioned the walls. It was around that time that Fernanda got the impression that the house was filling up with elves. It was as if things
especially those for everyday use
had developed a faculty for changing location on their own. Fernanda would waste time looking for the shears that she was sure she had put on the bed and after turning everything upside down she would find them on a shelf in the kitchen
where she thought she had not been for four days. Suddenly there was no fork in the silver chest and she would find six on the altar and three in the washroom. That wandering about of things was even more exasperating when she sat down to write. The inkwell that she had placed at her right would be on the left
the blotter would be lost and she would find it o days later under her pillow
and the pages written to Jos?Arcadio would get mixed up with those written to Amaranta ?rsula
and she always had the feeling of mortification that she had put the letters in opposite envelopes
as in fact happened several times. On one occasion she lost her fountain pen. Two weeks later the mailman
who had found it in his bag
returned it. He had been going from house to house looking for its owner. At first she thought it was some business of the invisible doctors
like the disappearance of the pessaries
and she even started a letter to them begging them to leave her alone
but she had to interrupt it to do something and when she went back to her room she not only did not find the letter she had started but she had fotten the reason for writing it. For a time she thought it was Aureliano. She began to spy on him
to put things in his path trying to catch him when he changed their location
but she was soon convinced that Aureliano never left Melquíades?room except to go to the kitchen or the toilet
and that he was not a man to play tricks. So in the end she believed that it was the mischief of elves and she decided to secure everything in the place where she would use it. She tied the shears to the head of her bed with a long string. She tied the pen and the blotter to the leg of the table
and the glued the inkwell to the top of it to the right of the place where she normally wrote. The problems were not solved overnight
because a few hours after she had tied the string to the shears it was not long enough for her to cut with
as if the elves had shortened it. The same thing happened to her with the string to the pen and even with her own arm which after a short time of writing could not reach the inkwell. Neither Amaranta ?rsula in Brussels nor Jos?Arcadio in Rome ever heard about those insignificant misfortunes. Fernanda told them that she was happy and in reality she was
precisely because she felt free from any promise
as if life were pulling her once more toward the world of her parents
where one did not suffer with day-to-day problems because they were solved beforehand in one’s imagination. That endless correspondence made her lose her sense of time
especially after Santa Sofía de la Piedad had left. She had been accustomed to keep track of the days
months
and years
using as points of reference the dates set for the return of her children. But when they changed their plans time and time again
the dates became confused
the periods were mislaid
and one day seemed so much like another that one could not feel them pass. Instead of being impatient
she felt a deep pleasure in the delay. It did not worry her that many years after announcing the eve of his final vows
Jos?Arcadio was still saying that he was waiting to finish his studies in advanced theology in order to undertake those in diplomacy
because she understood how steep and paved with obstacles was the spiral stairway that led to the throne of Saint Peter. On the other hand
her spirits rose with news that would have been insignificant for other people
such as the fact that her son had seen the Pope. She felt a similar pleasure when Amaranta ?rsula wrote to tell her that her studies would last longer than the time foreseen because her excellent grades had earned her privileges that her father had not taken into account in his calculations.
More than three years had passed since Santa Sofía de la Piedad had brought him the grammar when Aureliano succeeded in translating the first sheet. It was not a useless chore. but it was only a first step along a road whose length it was impossible to predict
because the text in Spanish did not mean anything: the lines were in code. Aureliano lacked the means to establish the keys that would permit him to dig them out
but since Melquíades had told him that the books he needed to get to the bottom of the parchments were in the wise Catalonian’s store
he decided to speak to Fernanda so that she would let him get them. In the room devoured by rubble
whose unchecked proliferation had finally defeated it
he thought about the best way to frame the request
but when he found Fernanda taking her meal from the embers
which was his only chance to speak to her
the laboriously formulated request stuck in his throat and he lost his voice. That was the only time that he watched her. He listened to her steps in the bedroom. He heard her on her way to the door to await the letters from her children and to give hers to the mailman
and he listened until late at night to the harsh
impassioned scratching of her pen on the paper before hearing the sound of the light switch and the murmur of her prayers in the darkness. Only then did he go to sleep
trusting that on the following day the awaited opportunity would e. He became so inspired with the idea that permission would be granted that one morning he cut his hair
which at that time reached down to his shoulders
shaved off his tangled beard
put on some tight-fitting pants and a shirt with an artificial collar that he had inherited from he did not know whom
and waited in the kitchen for Fernanda to get her breakfast. The woman of every day
the one with her head held high and with a stony gait
did not arrive
but an old woman of supernatural beauty with a yellowed ermine cape
a crown of gilded cardboard
and the languid look of a person who wept in secret. Actually
ever since she had found it in Aureliano Segundo’s trunks
Fernanda had put on the moth-eaten queen’s dress many times. Anyone who could have seen her in front of the mirror
in ecstasy over her own regal gestures
would have had reason to think that she was mad. But she was not. She had simply turned the royal regalia into a device for her memory. The first time that she put it on she could not help a knot from forming in her heart and her eyes filling with tears because at that moment she smelled once more the odor of shoe polish on the boots of the officer who came to get her at her house to make her a queen
and her soul brightened with the nostalgia of her lost dreams. She felt so old
so worn out
so far away from the best moments of her life that she even yearned for those that she remembered as the worst
and only then did she discover how much she missed the whiff of oregano on the porch and the smell of the roses at dusk
and even the bestial nature of the parvenus. Her heart of pressed ash
which had resisted the most telling blows of daily reality without strain
fell apart with the first waves of nostalgia. The need to feel sad was being a vice as the years eroded her. She became human in her solitude. Nevertheless
the morning on which she entered the kitchen and found a cup of coffee offered her by a pale and bony adolescent with a hallucinated glow in his eyes
the claws of ridicule tore at her. Not only did she refuse him permission
but from then on she carried the keys to the house in the pocket where she kept the unused pessaries. It was a useless precaution because if he had wanted to
Aureliano could have escaped and even returned to the house without being seen. But the prolonged captivity
the uncertainty of the world
the habit of obedience had dried up the seeds of rebellion in his heart. So that he went back to his enclosure
reading and rereading the parchments and listening until very late at night to Fernanda sobbing in her bedroom. One morning he went to light the fire as usual and on the extinguished ashes he found the food that he had left for her the day before. Then he looked into her bedroom and saw her lying on the bed covered with the ermine cape
more beautiful than ever and with her skin turned into an ivory casing. Four months later
when Jos?Arcadio arrived
he found her intact.