百年孤独为什么值得看 世纪文学经典:《百年孤独》第1章Part 4

世纪文学经典:《百年孤独》第1章Part 4  

When the gypsies came back
úrsula had turned the whole population of the village against them. But curiosity was greater than fear
for that time the gypsies went about the town making a deafening noise with all manner of musical instruments while a hawker announced the exhibition of the most fabulous discovery of the Naciancenes. So that everyone went to the tent and by paying one cent they saw a youthful Melquíades
recovered
unwrinkled
with a new and flashing set of teeth. Those who remembered his gums that had been destroyed by scurvy
his flaccid cheeks
and his withered lips trembled with fear at the final proof of the gypsy's supernatural power. The fear turned into panic when Melquíades took out his teeth
intact
encased in their gums
and showed them to the audience for an instant-a fleeting instant in which he went back to being the same decrepit man of years past-and put them back again and smiled once more with the full control of his restored youth. Even José Arcadio Buendía himself considered that Melquíades' knowledge had reached unbearable extremes
but he felt a healthy excitement when the gypsy explained to him atone the workings of his false teeth. It seemed so simple and so prodigious at the same time that overnight he lost all interest in his experiments in alchemy. He underwent a new crisis of bad humor. He did not go back to eating regularly
and he would spend the day walking through the house. "Incredible things are happening in the world
" he said to úrsula. "Right there across the river there are all kinds of magical instruments while we keep on living like donkeys." Those who had known him since the foundation of Macondo were startled at how much he had changed under Melquíades' influence.
At first José Arcadio Buendía had been a kind of youthful patriarch who would give instructions for planting and advice for the raising of children and animals
and who collaborated with everyone
even in the physical work
for the welfare of the munity. Since his house from the very first had been the best in the village
the others had been built in its image and likeness. It had a small
well-lighted living roost
a dining room in the shape of a terrace with gaily colored flowers
o bedrooms
a courtyard with a gigantic chestnut tree
a well kept garden
and a corral where goats
pigs
and hens lived in peaceful munion. The only animals that were prohibited
not just in his house but in the entire settlement
were fighting cocks.
úrsula's capacity for work was the same as that of her husband. Active
small
severe
that woman of unbreakable nerves who at no moment in her life had been heard to sing seemed to be everywhere
from dawn until quite late at night
always pursued by the soft whispering of her stiff
starched petticoats. Thanks to her the floors of tamped earth
the unwhitewashed mud walls
the rustic
wooden furniture they had built themselves were always dean
and the old chests where they kept their clothes exhaled the warm smell of basil.