世紀文學經典:《百年孤獨》第20章Part7

He could not find the basket. At first he felt an outburst of joy, thinking that Amaranta ?rsula had awakened from death to take care of the child. But her corpse was a pile of stones under the blanket. Aware that when he arrived he had found the -door to the bedroom open, Aureliano went across the porch which was saturated with the morning sighs of oregano and looked into the dining room, where the remnants of the birth still lay: the large pot, the bloody sheets, the jars of ashes, and the twisted umbilical cord of the child on an opened diaper on the table next to the shears and the fishline. The idea that the midwife had returned for the child during the night gave him a pause of rest in which to think. He sank into the rocking chair, the same one in which Rebeca had sat during the early days of the house to give embroidery lessons, and in which Amaranta had played Chinese checkers with Colonel Gerineldo Márquez, and in which Amaranta ?rsula had sewn the tiny clothing for the child, and in that flash oflucidity he became aware that he was unable to bear in his soul the crushing weight of so much past. Wounded by the fatal lances of his own nostalgia and that of others, he admired the persistence of the spider webs on the dead rose bushes, the perseverance of the rye grass, the patience of the air in the radiant February dawn.
And then he saw the child. It was a dry and bloated bag of skin that all the ants in the world were dragging toward their holes along the stone path in the garden. Aureliano could not move. Not because he was paralyzed by horror but because at that prodigious instant Melquíades?final keys were revealed to him and he saw the epigraph of the parchments perfectly placed in the order of man’s time and space: The first of the line is tied to a tree and the last is being eaten by the ants.

誰知嬰兒已不在搖籃裏了。剎那間，一陣喜悅涌上奧雷連諾。布恩蒂亞的心頭——他想，也許阿瑪蘭塔。 烏蘇娜從死亡中復活過來，把兒子領去照顧了。可是，她依然躺在被子下面，僵硬得象一大塊行頭。奧雷連諾·布恩蒂亞還依稀地記得，他回到家裏時，臥室的門是開着的。他穿過早晨散發着牛至草香味的長廊，走進餐廳，只見分娩以後，那隻大鍋，那條血跡班斑的墊被，那塊裝灰用的瓦片，那塊鋪在桌子上的尿布，那條放在尿布中央、繞在一起的嬰兒臍帶，還有旁邊的那些剪刀和帶子，全都沒有拿走。奧雷連諾·布恩蒂亞心想，也許是助產婆昨夜回來把嬰兒抱走了。這個推測給了他集中思想所需的片刻喘息的機會，他在一把搖椅上躺下，在這把搖椅裏，雷貝卡學過刺繡，阿瑪蘭塔曾跟格林列爾多·馬克斯上校下過棋，阿瑪蘭塔·烏蘇哪曾給嬰兒縫過衣服：就在這一剎那間——在他恍然大悟的剎那間——他終於明白自己的心再也承受不了往日那麼多的重負。他自己的和別人的往事象致命的長矛刺痛了他的心。他詫異地望見放肆的蜘蛛網盤在枯死的玫瑰花叢上，望見到處都長滿了頑固的莠草，望見二月裏明朗的晨空一片寧靜。
就在這時，他看到了自己的兒子——一塊皺巴巴的咬爛了的皮膚，從四面八方聚集擾來的一羣螞蟻正把這塊皮膚沿着花園的石鋪小徑，往自己的洞穴盡力拖去。奧雷連諾·布恩蒂亞一下子呆住了，但不是由於驚訝和恐懼，而是因爲在這個奇異的一瞬間，他感覺到了最終破譯梅爾加德斯密碼的奧祕。他看到過羊皮紙手稿的卷首上有那麼一句題辭，跟這個家族的興衰完全相符：“家族中的第一個人將被綁在樹上，家族中的最後一個人將被螞蟻吃掉。”