百年孤独为什么值得看 世纪文学经典:《百年孤独》第3章Part 7

世纪文学经典:《百年孤独》第3章Part 7  

Aureliano threw a coin into the hopper that the matron had in her lap and went into the room without knowing why. The adolescent mulatto girl
with her small bitch's teats
was naked on the bed. Before Aureliano sixty-three men had passed through the room that night. From being used so much
kneaded with sweat and sighs
the air in the room had begun to turn to mud. The girl took off the soaked sheet and asked Aureliano to hold it by one side. It was as heavy as a piece of canvas. They squeezed it
isting it at the ends until it regained its natural weight. They turned over the mat and the sweat came out of the other side. Aureliano was anxious for that operation never to end. He knew the theoretical mechanics of love
but he could not stay on his feet because of the weakness of his knees
and although he had goose pimples on his burning skin he could not resist the urgent need to expel the weight of his bowels. When the girl finished fixing up the bed and told him to get undressed
he gave her a confused explanation: "They made me e in. They told me to throw enty cents into the hopper and hurry up." The girl understood his confusion. "If you throw in enty cents more when you go out
you can stay a little longer
" she said softly. Aureliano got undressed
tormented by shame
unable to get rid of the idea that-his nakedness could not stand parison with that of his brother. In spite of the girl's efforts he felt more and more indifferent and terribly alone. "I'll throw in other enty cents
" he said with a desolate voice. The girl thanked him in silence. Her back was raw. Her skin was stuck to her ribs and her breathing was forced because of an immeasurable exhaustion. Two years before
far away from there
she had fallen asleep without putting out the candle and had awakened surrounded by flames. The house where she lived with the grand-mother who had raised her was reduced to ashes. Since then her grandmother carried her from town to town
putting her to bed for enty cents in order to make up the value of the burned house. According to the girl's calculations
she still had ten years of seventy men per night
because she also had to pay the expenses of the trip and food for both of them as well as the pay of the Indians who carried the rocking chair. When the matron knocked on the door the second time
Aureliano left the room without having done anything
troubled by a desire to weep. That night he could not sleep
thinking about the girl
with a mixture of desire and pity. He felt an irresistible need to love her and protect her. At dawn
worn out by insomnia and fever
he made the calm decision to marry her in order to free her from the despotism of her grandmother and to enjoy all the nights of satisfaction that she would give the seventy men. But at ten o'clock in the morning
when he reached Catarino's store
the girl had left town.
Time mitigated his mad proposal
but it aggravated his feelings of frustration. He took refuge in work. He resigned himself to being a womanless man for all his life in order to hide the shame of his uselessness. In the meantime
Melquíades had printed on his plates everything that was printable in Macondo
and he left the daguerreotype laboratory to the fantasies of José Arcadio Buendía who had resolved to use it to obtain scientific proof of the existence of God. Through a plicated process of superimposed exposures taken in different parts of the house
he was sure that sooner or later he would get a daguerreotype of God
if He existed
or put an end once and for all to the supposition of His existence. Melquíades got deeper into his interpretations of Nostradamus. He would stay up until very late
suffocating in his faded velvet vest
scribbling with his tiny sparrow hands
whose rings had lost the glow of former times. One night he thought he had found a prediction of the future of Macondo. It wasto be a luminous city with great glass houses where there was no trace remaining of the race of the Buendía. "It's a mistake
" José Arcadio Buendía thundered. "They won't be houses of glass but of ice
as I dreamed
and there will always be a Buendía
per omnia secula seculorum." úrsula fought to preserve mon sense in that extravagant house
having broadened her business of little candy animals with an oven that went all night turning out baskets and more baskets of bread and a prodigious variety of puddings
meringues
and cookies
which disappeared in a few hours on the roads winding through the swamp. She had reached an age where she had a right to rest
but she was noheless more and more active. So busy was she in her prosperous enterprises that one afternoon she looked distractedly toward the courtyard while the Indian woman helped her sweeten the dough and she saw o unknown and beautiful adolescent girls doing frame embroidery in the light of the sunset. They were Rebeca and Amaranta. As soon as they had taken off the mourning clothes for their grandmother
which they wore with inflexible rigor for three years
their bright clothes seemed to have given them a new place in the world. Rebeca
contrary to what might have been expected
was the more beautiful. She had a light plexion
large and peaceful eyes
and magical hands that seemed to work out the design of the embroidery with invisible threads. Amaranta
the younger
was somewhat graceless
but she had the natural distinction
the inner tightness of her dead grand-mother. Next to them
although he was already revealing the physical drive of his father
Arcadio looked like a child. He set about learning the art of silverwork with Aureliano
who had also taught him how to read and write. úrsula suddenly realized that the house had bee full of people
that her children were on the point of marrying and having children
and that they would be obliged to scatter for lack of space. Then she took out the money she had accumulated over long years of hard labor
made some arrangements with her customers
and undertook the enlargement of the house. She had a formal parlor for visits built
another one that was more fortable and cool for daily use
a dining room with a table with elve places where the family could sit with all of their guests
nine bedrooms with windows on the courtyard and a long porch protected from the heat of noon by a rose garden with a railing on which to place pots of ferns and begonias. She had the kitchen enlarged to hold o ovens. The granary where Pilar Ternera had read José Arcadio's future was torn down and another ice as large built so that there would never be a lack of food in the house. She had baths built is the courtyard in the shade of the chestnut tree
one for the women and another for the men
and in the rear a large stable
a fencedin chicken yard
a shed for the milk cows
and an aviary open to the four winds so that wandering birds could roost there at their pleasure. Followed by dozens of masons and carpenters
as if she had contracted her husband's hallucinating fever
úrsula fixed the position of light and heat and distributed space without the least sense of its limitations. The primitive building of the founders became filled with tools and materials
of workmen exhausted by sweat
who asked everybody please not to molest them
exasperated by the sack of bones that followed them everywhere with its dull rattle. In that disfort
breathing quicklime and tar
no one could see very well how from the bowels of the earth there was rising not only the largest house is the town
but the most hospitable and cool house that had ever existed in the region of the swamp. José Buendía
trying to surprise Divine Providence in the midst of the cataclysm
was the one who least understood it. The new house was almost finished when úrsula drew him out of his chimerical world in order to inform him that she had an order to paint the front blue and not white as they had wanted. She showed him the official document. José Arcadio Buendía
without understanding what his wife was talking about
deciphered the signature.
"Who is this fellow?" he asked: