百年孤独为什么值得看 世纪文学经典:《百年孤独》第13章Part11

世纪文学经典:《百年孤独》第13章Part11  

"What a rain!" úrsula said.
"October
" he said.
When he said it he did not raise his eyes from the first little fish of the day because he was putting in the rubies for the eyes. Only when he finished it and put it with the others in the pail did he begin to drink the soup. Then
very slowly
he ate the piece of meat roasted with onions
the white rice
and the slices of fried bananas all on the same plate together. His appetite did not change under either the best or the harshest of circumstances. After lunch he felt the drowsiness of inactivity. Because of a kind of scientific superstition he never worked
or read
or bathed
or made love until o hours of digestion had gone by
and it was such a deep-rooted belief that several times he held up military operations so as not to submit the troops to the risks of indigestion. So he lay down in the hammock
removing the wax from his ears with a penknife
and in a few minutes he was asleep. He dreamed that he was going into an empty house with white walls and that he was upset by the burden of being the first human being to enter it. In the dream he remembered that he had dreamed the same thing the night before and on many nights over the past years and he knew that the image would be erased from his memory when he awakened because that recurrent dream had the quality of not being remembered except within the dream itself. A moment later
indeed
when the barber knocked at the workshop door
Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía awoke with the impression that he had fallen asleep involuntarily for a few seconds and that he had not had time to dream anything.
"Not today." he told the barber. "We'll make it on Friday."
He had a three-day beard speckled with white hairs
but he did not think it necessary to shave because on Friday he was going to have his hair cut and it could all be done at the same time. The sticky sweat of the unwanted siesta aroused the scars of the sores in his armpits. The sky had cleared but the sun had not e out. Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía released a sonorous belch which brought back the acidity of the soup to his palate and which was like a mand from his anism to throw his blanket over his shoulders and go to the toilet. He stayed there longer than was necessary
crouched over the dense fermentation that was ing out of the wooden box until habit told him that it was time to start work again. During the time he lingered he remembered again that it was Tuesday
and that José Arcadio Segun-do had not e to the workshop because it was payday on the banana pany farms. That recollection
as all of those of the past few years
led him to think about the war without his realizing it. He remembered that Colonel Geri-neldo Márquez had once promised to get him a horse with a white star on its face and that he had never spoken about it again. Then he went on toward scattered episodes but he brought them back without any judgment because since he could not think about anything else
he had learned to think coldly so that inescapable memories would not touch any feeling. On his way back to the workshop
seeing that the air was beginning to dry out
he decided that it was a good time to take a bath
but Amaranta had got there ahead of him. So he started on the second little fish of the day. He was putting a hook on the tail when the sun came out with such strength that the light creaked like a fishing boat. The air
which had been washed by the three-day drizzle
was filled with flying ants. Then he came to the realization that he felt like urinating and he had been putting it off until he had finished fixing the little fish. He went out into the courtyard at ten minutes after four
when he heard the distant brass instruments
the beating of the bass drum and the shouting of the children
and for the first time since his youth he knowingly fell into a trap of nostalgia and relived that prodigious afternoon Of the gypsies when his father took him to see ice. Santa Sofía de la Piedad dropped what she was doing in the kitchen and ran to the door.
"It's the circus
" she shouted.
Instead of going to the chestnut tree
Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía also went to the street door and mingled with the bystanders who
were watching the parade. He saw a woman dressed in gold sitting on the head of an elephant. He saw a sad dromedary. He saw a bear dressed like a Dutch girl keeping time to the music with a soup spoon and a pan. He saw the clowns doing carheels at the end of the parade and once more he saw the face of his miserable solitude when everything had passed by and there was nothing but the bright expanse of the street and the air full of flying ants with a few onlookers peering into the precipice of uncertainty. Then he went to the chestnut tree
thinking about the circus
and while he urinated he tried to keep on thinking about the circus
but he could no longer find the memory. He pulled his head in beeen his shoulders like a baby chick and remained motionless with his forehead against the trunk of the chestnut tree. The family did not find him until the following day at eleven o'clock in the morning when Santa Sofía de la Piedad went to throw out the garbage in back and her attention was attracted by the descending vultures.