How I Discovered Gabriel我與《百年孤獨》的美妙邂逅

New+Oriental+English

It is a very private story that I occasionally tell， but only to aspiring literary types， younger executives， and teenage bookworms who find time to ask me what is a good English-language book or novel to read. The story is about how， many years ago， I discovered Gabriel García Márquez in the romance section of a big bookstore at Claro M. Recto Avenue in Manila. It was shortly before or right after martial law1） had taken the life of the daily paper where I worked as a roving reporter2）， I cannot remember the exact date now. But there was Márquez， still a total stranger to me， in the Avon hardback edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude， enjoying in the same shelf the company of such rupture3）-and-heartbreak novelists as Emilie Loring4）， Barbara Cartland5）， and Jacqueline Susann6）. No， García Márquez did not get there as an occasional stray， chucked7） absentmindedly or insensitively into the shelf by some browser. If memory serves me well， the book had been actually misclassified and miscatalogued in the same genre as the more popular company it was keeping when I found it.

The reason why it got there was probably serendipity8） of the most sublime order， but I think you can dismiss that thought as just me imagining the whole thing in chronological reverse. A more plausible reason was that it had the green and grainy cover art of a naked man and woman in passionate embrace， which I later thought was the publishers well-intentioned attempt to make the Buendía familys otherwise unimaginable tragedies and grief more commercially acceptable. It was actually this somber study9） in solarized10） chiaroscuro11） that drew my eye to the book. When I began to leaf through12） it， however， furtively13） expecting some passages about women in the throes14） of illicit15） sex， I read something much more exciting， much more stimulating， and much more intriguing. “Many years later，” García Márquez began， “as he faced the firing squad， Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” A few passages later I was irretrievably16） sold to the book. I promptly paid for it， tearing the plastic wrapping no sooner had the sales clerk sealed it， and started to read as I trudged17） the sidewalk on my way to my apartment somewhere in the city.

When I had read the book twice or thrice18） and still couldnt get over the thrill of the discovery， I excitedly recommended and lent it to a broadcast acquaintance at the old National Press Club. I cant remember now who the borrower was， but he was one of those press club habitués19） who would dawdle over20） beer or gin tonic at the bar till the midnight closing song-and-piano piece was over. What I do remember is that he never returned it to me. He assured me， however， that he had read it and enjoyed it so much that he could not resist lending it to someone—was it Carmen Guerrero-Nakpil or the late Renato Constantino？—who in turn lent it to someone who lent it to someone until finally the chain in the lending was lost. The last I heard from the original borrower was that the book had been passed on to an English Lit. professor at the University of the Philippines， where a few years later I was to learn that it had become mandatory reading in its English graduate school.

Being pathetically21） inept in Spanish I could never really know what Castilian22） or Colombian idioms I missed in the English translation， but the English-language García Márquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude truly set my mind on fire. He lit in me a tiny flame at first， then a silent fire for language that burned even brighter with the passing of the years. He was not only robust and masterful in his prose but devastatingly penetrating in his insights about the flow and ebb23） of life in the archetypal24） South American town of Macondo. Not since I chanced upon a battered copy of The Leopard25） by the Italian writer Giuseppe di Lampedusa two years earlier， this time a real stray in a smaller bookstore nearby， had I seen such soaring yet quietly majestic writing. Here is García Márquez at his surreal best： “Fernanda felt a delicate wind of light pull the sheets out of her hands and open them up wide. Amaranta felt a mysterious trembling in the lace26） on her petticoats27） as she tried to grasp the sheet so that she would not fall down at the instant when Remedios the Beauty began to rise. ?rsula， almost blind at the time， was the only person who was sufficiently calm to identify the nature of that determined wind and she left the sheets to the mercy of28） the light as she watched Remedios the Beauty waving goodbye in the midst of the sheets of the flapping sheets that rose up with her …” With prose like this I became a García Márquez pilgrim， re-reading One Hundred Years of Solitude countless times and devouring29）， like an adolescent glutton30）， practically31） all of his novels and short-story collections in the years that followed.

Many years later， in 1982， I was to discover in the morning papers that García Márquez had so deservedly won the Nobel Prize for literature. I was so happy for the new Nobel Laureate and for myself， and I no longer thought anymore of ever recovering that first copy of him that I had the pleasure of retrieving from the company where it obviously didnt belong. In homage32） I went back to the bookstore where I first found García Márquez， quietly and almost reverently33） picking up a new Picador paperback edition of him. Its cover art was no longer the man and woman in the deathless embrace， but this time an image more faithful to the elemental truth of the book： the whole Buendía family in a portrait of domestic but elegiac34） simplicity， at one and at peace with35） the chickens and shrubs and flowers that gave them sustenance， awaiting the last of the one hundred years allotted to them on earth.

The book is mottled with age and yellow with paper acid now. Now and then I would lend it to a soul that is intrigued why I would keep such a forlorn36） book on my office desk， but only after tragicomically37） extracting an elaborate pledge that he or she would really read it and give it back to me no matter how long it took to finish it.

這是個私密的故事，我很少對外人提及，只是偶爾對有抱負的文學青年、年輕的管理者和青少年“書蟲”——那些會抽出時間問我有哪些值得一讀的英文書或小說的人——講起。故事是關(guān)于多年前我是如何在馬尼拉的克拉羅·M·雷克托大街一家大型書店的愛情小說類專區(qū)里發(fā)現(xiàn)加夫列爾·加西亞·馬爾克斯的。當時正值我做流動記者時供職的那家日報因為軍事戒嚴令而即將關(guān)閉之時，又或是剛剛關(guān)閉之后，我現(xiàn)在已記不起具體的日期了。但是，在擺放著艾米莉·洛林、芭芭拉·卡特蘭和杰奎琳·蘇珊等擅長描寫失戀和心碎題材的作家作品的書架上，我看到了馬爾克斯的著作——埃文出版社出版的《百年孤獨》精裝本，當時我還從未聽說過他的名字。不，加西亞·馬爾克斯的書在那兒不是因為偶然被放錯了地方，不是被顧客翻看后漫不經(jīng)心或隨手扔在書架上的。如果我沒有記錯，在我看到這本書時，它其實是由于圖書分類與編目錯誤才與旁邊那些更為通俗的小說歸為一類的。

這本書出現(xiàn)在那里或許是因為最湊巧的機緣巧合，不過我想你對此不必當真，僅把這當成是我從后往前想象出整件事情而已。更為合理的解釋是，這本書紋理清晰的綠色封面上印著一對熱烈擁抱的裸體男女，事后想來，我覺得那是出版商一個善意的嘗試，希望借此把布恩迪亞家族原本令人無法想象的不幸和苦難表現(xiàn)得更易被購買者接受。實際上，這本書最初吸引我眼球的正是它那因曝光過度而明暗對比強烈、色調(diào)黯淡的封面圖案?？墒牵斘夷闷饡鴣聿莶莘?，暗中期待著能看到一些描寫女性在不倫關(guān)系中痛苦掙扎的段落時，我卻讀到了更為激動人心、更加令人振奮和更加引人入勝的文字?！霸S多年后，”加西亞·馬爾克斯在開篇中寫道，“面對著行刑隊，奧雷里亞諾·布恩迪亞上校將會想起父親帶他去看冰的那個遙遠的午后?！弊x了幾段之后，我已不可救藥地被這本書迷住了。我當即掏錢買下它，迫不及待地撕開店員剛剛包上的塑料紙，一邊沿著人行道邁著沉重的步伐走向位于城市某處的我的公寓，一邊讀了起來。

我把這本書讀過兩三遍之后，當初發(fā)現(xiàn)它時的激動心情仍然難以平復(fù)，于是我興奮地向昔日的全國記者俱樂部里一個在電臺工作的熟人推薦了這本書，并把書借給了他。我已經(jīng)不記得這個借書人是誰了，不過他是記者俱樂部的?？?，是那種在酒吧慢悠悠地喝著啤酒或杜松子酒，直到午夜時分作為結(jié)束曲的鋼琴彈唱終了方肯離開的人。我準確記得的是他從未把書還給我。不過，他向我保證說，他讀了這本書，并且因為太喜歡了，就忍不住又把它借給了別人——是卡門·格雷羅-納克皮爾還是已故的雷納托·康斯坦蒂諾？——這些人又繼續(xù)把書轉(zhuǎn)借出去，以至于到了最后，書的下落已無跡可尋。我從最初的借閱者那里最后獲得的消息是，書已經(jīng)傳到了菲律賓大學一位英語文學教授的手中。數(shù)年后我從那里得知，這本書已被列入該校英語系研究生的必讀書目了。

可惜我的西班牙語實在不靈光，我將永遠也無從知曉，在英譯本中我錯過了哪些西班牙和哥倫比亞的習語，但是在英文版《百年孤獨》中，加西亞·馬爾克斯著實點燃了我的激情。起初，他在我心里播下微弱的星星之火，繼而，又點燃了我對語言無聲的熱情之火，隨著歲月的流逝，這團熱情的火焰越燒越熾烈。他的文風不僅雄健有力，技巧純熟，而且對馬孔多這個典型的南美小鎮(zhèn)中生命的盛衰起伏有著令人折服的敏銳洞察力。兩年前，我在附近一家規(guī)模較小的書店里偶然發(fā)現(xiàn)了一本殘破的意大利作家朱塞佩·迪蘭佩杜薩的作品《豹》——那本書是真的被放錯了地方，自那之后，我還未曾見到過如此自在縱橫而又莊嚴宏大的作品。這是處于超現(xiàn)實主義創(chuàng)作巔峰時期的加西亞·馬爾克斯筆下的文字：“費爾南達感到光像一陣輕柔的風，把床單從她手里抽走并將它們?nèi)归_。阿瑪蘭塔試圖抓住床單，以免在美人兒雷梅迪奧斯開始上升的瞬間自己會摔倒，那一刻她感到裙子的蕾絲花邊在神秘地震顫。當時幾近失明的烏爾蘇拉是唯一一個十分鎮(zhèn)定的人，她認出了這股意志堅決的風的本質(zhì)，看著美人兒雷梅迪奧斯在床單中間、在隨之一起飄升的床單中間向她揮手道別，烏爾蘇拉放開床單，任憑光將它們帶走……”正是這樣的文字讓我成為加西亞·馬爾克斯虔誠的信徒，在后來的歲月中，我不僅將《百年孤獨》重讀了無數(shù)遍，而且像個青春期食欲旺盛的少年一樣，如饑似渴地把他所有的小說和短篇故事集幾乎都讀完了。

許多年過去了，1982年我從早報上得知，加西亞·馬爾克斯獲得了諾貝爾文學獎，真是實至名歸。我為這位新晉的諾貝爾獎得主感到高興，也為自己感到高興。至于最初那本我有幸從明顯不屬于它的位置上發(fā)現(xiàn)的馬爾克斯的書，我也徹底放棄了找回來的打算。懷著敬意，我再次來到第一次發(fā)現(xiàn)加西亞·馬爾克斯的那家書店，輕輕地、近乎虔誠地拿起一本騎馬斗牛士出版社新出版的平裝本。書的封面不再是一對男女永恒的擁抱，取而代之的是一幅更加忠實于小說的基本事實的畫面：一張布恩迪亞家族的全家福，照片是在家里拍的，散發(fā)著憂傷與質(zhì)樸的氣息，他們與周圍那些為他們提供生計的雞、灌木和鮮花構(gòu)成了一幅和諧統(tǒng)一的圖景，等待著授予他們一百年塵世生活的最后時刻的來臨。

如今，在歲月和紙酸的雙重作用下，這本書已經(jīng)斑駁泛黃。我偶爾會把它借給對我在辦公桌上放這樣一本破舊的書感到好奇的人，不過我先要令人哭笑不得地讓他們鄭重承諾，無論花多長時間，一定要真的讀這本書，并且在讀完之后把它還給我。

1. martial law：指菲律賓第六任總統(tǒng)費迪南德·馬科斯（Ferdinand Maros）于1972年9月21日頒布的軍事戒嚴令。當時，已連任兩屆總統(tǒng)的馬科斯為實現(xiàn)獨裁的目的，決意要打破憲法對總統(tǒng)任期的限制，因此于1972年9月21日以打擊游擊隊為名，宣布全國戒嚴，采取了中止憲法、解散國會、禁止一切政黨活動、禁止公眾集會、查封一切媒體、中止人身保護令等措施。

2. roving reporter：流動記者

3. rupture [?r?pt??（r）] n. （關(guān)系的）裂痕，破裂，斷絕

4. Emilie Loring：艾米莉·洛林（1864～1951），20世紀美國多產(chǎn)的言情小說家，從50歲才開始創(chuàng)作。

5. Barbara Cartland：芭芭拉·卡特蘭（1901～2000），20世紀英國的言情小說家，同時也是歷史學家和社會活動家，一生寫過700多本言情小說。

6. Jacqueline Susann：杰奎琳·蘇珊（1918～1994），美國小說家，代表作為《娃娃谷》（Valley of the Dolls）。

7. chuck [t??k] vt. （隨意或胡亂地）丟，扔，拋

8. serendipity [?ser?n?d?p?ti] n. （意外發(fā)現(xiàn)或發(fā)明新奇或有價值事物的）運氣，走運，機緣湊巧

9. study [?st?di] n. [畫]習作；試畫；試作

10. solarize [?s??l?ra?z] vt. 使過度曝光

11. chiaroscuro [ki?ɑ?r??sk??r??] n. （繪畫中的）明暗對比法，明暗效果

12. leaf through：翻閱；瀏覽

13. furtively [?f??t?vli] adv. 偷偷摸摸地；鬼鬼祟祟地；秘密地

14. throes [θr??z] n. [復(fù)] （尤指最后階段的）困境，痛苦

15. illicit [??l?s?t] adj. （尤指從社會習俗等角度考量）不正當?shù)?，非法?/p>

16. irretrievably [??r??tri?v?bli] adv. 無法挽救地；無法彌補地

17. trudge [tr?d?] vt. （尤指因疲憊或沮喪）拖著沉重的腳步走過，步履艱難地走過

18. twice or thrice：兩三次

19. habitué [（h）??b?t?ue?] n. 常客

20. dawdle over：慢吞吞地做；（在……）磨蹭。dawdle [?d??dl] vi. 閑逛；游蕩

21. pathetically [p??θet?kli] adv. 可憐地；令人憐憫地；悲慘地

22. Castilian [?kɑ?st?li?n] n. （以卡斯蒂利亞的西班牙方言為基礎(chǔ)的）標準西班牙語

23. flow and ebb：起起落落

24. archetypal [?ɑ?ki?ta?pl] adj. 典型的；有代表性的

25. The Leopard：《豹》，是意大利作家朱塞佩·迪蘭佩杜薩（Giuseppe di Lampedusa， 1896～1957）的代表作，曾獲得意大利斯特雷加文學獎，被譽為意大利文學史上承前啟后的杰作。

26. lace [le?s] n. 網(wǎng)眼織物；花邊；蕾絲

27. petticoat [?pet?k??t] n. 襯裙，裙子

28. leave sth. to the mercy of：任由……受擺布或折磨

29. devour [d??va??（r）] vt. 如饑似渴地閱讀；熱切地看

30. glutton [?ɡl?tn] n. 貪吃的人；食量大的人

31. practically [?pr?kt?kli] adv. 〈口〉幾乎，差不多

32. homage [?h?m?d?] n. 尊敬，敬意；崇敬

33. reverently [?rev?r?ntli] adv. 恭敬地，虔敬地

34. elegiac [?el??d?a??k] adj. 悲哀的；哀悼的；傷感的

35. at one with：與……意見一致

36. forlorn [f??l??n] adj. 破爛的，破舊的

37. tragicomically [?tr?d?i?k?m?kli] adv. 悲喜劇地

It is a very private story that I occasionally tell， but only to aspiring literary types， younger executives， and teenage bookworms who find time to ask me what is a good English-language book or novel to read. The story is about how， many years ago， I discovered Gabriel García Márquez in the romance section of a big bookstore at Claro M. Recto Avenue in Manila. It was shortly before or right after martial law1） had taken the life of the daily paper where I worked as a roving reporter2）， I cannot remember the exact date now. But there was Márquez， still a total stranger to me， in the Avon hardback edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude， enjoying in the same shelf the company of such rupture3）-and-heartbreak novelists as Emilie Loring4）， Barbara Cartland5）， and Jacqueline Susann6）. No， García Márquez did not get there as an occasional stray， chucked7） absentmindedly or insensitively into the shelf by some browser. If memory serves me well， the book had been actually misclassified and miscatalogued in the same genre as the more popular company it was keeping when I found it.

The reason why it got there was probably serendipity8） of the most sublime order， but I think you can dismiss that thought as just me imagining the whole thing in chronological reverse. A more plausible reason was that it had the green and grainy cover art of a naked man and woman in passionate embrace， which I later thought was the publishers well-intentioned attempt to make the Buendía familys otherwise unimaginable tragedies and grief more commercially acceptable. It was actually this somber study9） in solarized10） chiaroscuro11） that drew my eye to the book. When I began to leaf through12） it， however， furtively13） expecting some passages about women in the throes14） of illicit15） sex， I read something much more exciting， much more stimulating， and much more intriguing. “Many years later，” García Márquez began， “as he faced the firing squad， Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” A few passages later I was irretrievably16） sold to the book. I promptly paid for it， tearing the plastic wrapping no sooner had the sales clerk sealed it， and started to read as I trudged17） the sidewalk on my way to my apartment somewhere in the city.

When I had read the book twice or thrice18） and still couldnt get over the thrill of the discovery， I excitedly recommended and lent it to a broadcast acquaintance at the old National Press Club. I cant remember now who the borrower was， but he was one of those press club habitués19） who would dawdle over20） beer or gin tonic at the bar till the midnight closing song-and-piano piece was over. What I do remember is that he never returned it to me. He assured me， however， that he had read it and enjoyed it so much that he could not resist lending it to someone—was it Carmen Guerrero-Nakpil or the late Renato Constantino？—who in turn lent it to someone who lent it to someone until finally the chain in the lending was lost. The last I heard from the original borrower was that the book had been passed on to an English Lit. professor at the University of the Philippines， where a few years later I was to learn that it had become mandatory reading in its English graduate school.

Being pathetically21） inept in Spanish I could never really know what Castilian22） or Colombian idioms I missed in the English translation， but the English-language García Márquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude truly set my mind on fire. He lit in me a tiny flame at first， then a silent fire for language that burned even brighter with the passing of the years. He was not only robust and masterful in his prose but devastatingly penetrating in his insights about the flow and ebb23） of life in the archetypal24） South American town of Macondo. Not since I chanced upon a battered copy of The Leopard25） by the Italian writer Giuseppe di Lampedusa two years earlier， this time a real stray in a smaller bookstore nearby， had I seen such soaring yet quietly majestic writing. Here is García Márquez at his surreal best： “Fernanda felt a delicate wind of light pull the sheets out of her hands and open them up wide. Amaranta felt a mysterious trembling in the lace26） on her petticoats27） as she tried to grasp the sheet so that she would not fall down at the instant when Remedios the Beauty began to rise. ?rsula， almost blind at the time， was the only person who was sufficiently calm to identify the nature of that determined wind and she left the sheets to the mercy of28） the light as she watched Remedios the Beauty waving goodbye in the midst of the sheets of the flapping sheets that rose up with her …” With prose like this I became a García Márquez pilgrim， re-reading One Hundred Years of Solitude countless times and devouring29）， like an adolescent glutton30）， practically31） all of his novels and short-story collections in the years that followed.

Many years later， in 1982， I was to discover in the morning papers that García Márquez had so deservedly won the Nobel Prize for literature. I was so happy for the new Nobel Laureate and for myself， and I no longer thought anymore of ever recovering that first copy of him that I had the pleasure of retrieving from the company where it obviously didnt belong. In homage32） I went back to the bookstore where I first found García Márquez， quietly and almost reverently33） picking up a new Picador paperback edition of him. Its cover art was no longer the man and woman in the deathless embrace， but this time an image more faithful to the elemental truth of the book： the whole Buendía family in a portrait of domestic but elegiac34） simplicity， at one and at peace with35） the chickens and shrubs and flowers that gave them sustenance， awaiting the last of the one hundred years allotted to them on earth.

The book is mottled with age and yellow with paper acid now. Now and then I would lend it to a soul that is intrigued why I would keep such a forlorn36） book on my office desk， but only after tragicomically37） extracting an elaborate pledge that he or she would really read it and give it back to me no matter how long it took to finish it.

這是個私密的故事，我很少對外人提及，只是偶爾對有抱負的文學青年、年輕的管理者和青少年“書蟲”——那些會抽出時間問我有哪些值得一讀的英文書或小說的人——講起。故事是關(guān)于多年前我是如何在馬尼拉的克拉羅·M·雷克托大街一家大型書店的愛情小說類專區(qū)里發(fā)現(xiàn)加夫列爾·加西亞·馬爾克斯的。當時正值我做流動記者時供職的那家日報因為軍事戒嚴令而即將關(guān)閉之時，又或是剛剛關(guān)閉之后，我現(xiàn)在已記不起具體的日期了。但是，在擺放著艾米莉·洛林、芭芭拉·卡特蘭和杰奎琳·蘇珊等擅長描寫失戀和心碎題材的作家作品的書架上，我看到了馬爾克斯的著作——埃文出版社出版的《百年孤獨》精裝本，當時我還從未聽說過他的名字。不，加西亞·馬爾克斯的書在那兒不是因為偶然被放錯了地方，不是被顧客翻看后漫不經(jīng)心或隨手扔在書架上的。如果我沒有記錯，在我看到這本書時，它其實是由于圖書分類與編目錯誤才與旁邊那些更為通俗的小說歸為一類的。

這本書出現(xiàn)在那里或許是因為最湊巧的機緣巧合，不過我想你對此不必當真，僅把這當成是我從后往前想象出整件事情而已。更為合理的解釋是，這本書紋理清晰的綠色封面上印著一對熱烈擁抱的裸體男女，事后想來，我覺得那是出版商一個善意的嘗試，希望借此把布恩迪亞家族原本令人無法想象的不幸和苦難表現(xiàn)得更易被購買者接受。實際上，這本書最初吸引我眼球的正是它那因曝光過度而明暗對比強烈、色調(diào)黯淡的封面圖案?？墒?，當我拿起書來草草翻看，暗中期待著能看到一些描寫女性在不倫關(guān)系中痛苦掙扎的段落時，我卻讀到了更為激動人心、更加令人振奮和更加引人入勝的文字?！霸S多年后，”加西亞·馬爾克斯在開篇中寫道，“面對著行刑隊，奧雷里亞諾·布恩迪亞上校將會想起父親帶他去看冰的那個遙遠的午后?！弊x了幾段之后，我已不可救藥地被這本書迷住了。我當即掏錢買下它，迫不及待地撕開店員剛剛包上的塑料紙，一邊沿著人行道邁著沉重的步伐走向位于城市某處的我的公寓，一邊讀了起來。

我把這本書讀過兩三遍之后，當初發(fā)現(xiàn)它時的激動心情仍然難以平復(fù)，于是我興奮地向昔日的全國記者俱樂部里一個在電臺工作的熟人推薦了這本書，并把書借給了他。我已經(jīng)不記得這個借書人是誰了，不過他是記者俱樂部的?？?，是那種在酒吧慢悠悠地喝著啤酒或杜松子酒，直到午夜時分作為結(jié)束曲的鋼琴彈唱終了方肯離開的人。我準確記得的是他從未把書還給我。不過，他向我保證說，他讀了這本書，并且因為太喜歡了，就忍不住又把它借給了別人——是卡門·格雷羅-納克皮爾還是已故的雷納托·康斯坦蒂諾？——這些人又繼續(xù)把書轉(zhuǎn)借出去，以至于到了最后，書的下落已無跡可尋。我從最初的借閱者那里最后獲得的消息是，書已經(jīng)傳到了菲律賓大學一位英語文學教授的手中。數(shù)年后我從那里得知，這本書已被列入該校英語系研究生的必讀書目了。

可惜我的西班牙語實在不靈光，我將永遠也無從知曉，在英譯本中我錯過了哪些西班牙和哥倫比亞的習語，但是在英文版《百年孤獨》中，加西亞·馬爾克斯著實點燃了我的激情。起初，他在我心里播下微弱的星星之火，繼而，又點燃了我對語言無聲的熱情之火，隨著歲月的流逝，這團熱情的火焰越燒越熾烈。他的文風不僅雄健有力，技巧純熟，而且對馬孔多這個典型的南美小鎮(zhèn)中生命的盛衰起伏有著令人折服的敏銳洞察力。兩年前，我在附近一家規(guī)模較小的書店里偶然發(fā)現(xiàn)了一本殘破的意大利作家朱塞佩·迪蘭佩杜薩的作品《豹》——那本書是真的被放錯了地方，自那之后，我還未曾見到過如此自在縱橫而又莊嚴宏大的作品。這是處于超現(xiàn)實主義創(chuàng)作巔峰時期的加西亞·馬爾克斯筆下的文字：“費爾南達感到光像一陣輕柔的風，把床單從她手里抽走并將它們?nèi)归_。阿瑪蘭塔試圖抓住床單，以免在美人兒雷梅迪奧斯開始上升的瞬間自己會摔倒，那一刻她感到裙子的蕾絲花邊在神秘地震顫。當時幾近失明的烏爾蘇拉是唯一一個十分鎮(zhèn)定的人，她認出了這股意志堅決的風的本質(zhì)，看著美人兒雷梅迪奧斯在床單中間、在隨之一起飄升的床單中間向她揮手道別，烏爾蘇拉放開床單，任憑光將它們帶走……”正是這樣的文字讓我成為加西亞·馬爾克斯虔誠的信徒，在后來的歲月中，我不僅將《百年孤獨》重讀了無數(shù)遍，而且像個青春期食欲旺盛的少年一樣，如饑似渴地把他所有的小說和短篇故事集幾乎都讀完了。

許多年過去了，1982年我從早報上得知，加西亞·馬爾克斯獲得了諾貝爾文學獎，真是實至名歸。我為這位新晉的諾貝爾獎得主感到高興，也為自己感到高興。至于最初那本我有幸從明顯不屬于它的位置上發(fā)現(xiàn)的馬爾克斯的書，我也徹底放棄了找回來的打算。懷著敬意，我再次來到第一次發(fā)現(xiàn)加西亞·馬爾克斯的那家書店，輕輕地、近乎虔誠地拿起一本騎馬斗牛士出版社新出版的平裝本。書的封面不再是一對男女永恒的擁抱，取而代之的是一幅更加忠實于小說的基本事實的畫面：一張布恩迪亞家族的全家福，照片是在家里拍的，散發(fā)著憂傷與質(zhì)樸的氣息，他們與周圍那些為他們提供生計的雞、灌木和鮮花構(gòu)成了一幅和諧統(tǒng)一的圖景，等待著授予他們一百年塵世生活的最后時刻的來臨。

如今，在歲月和紙酸的雙重作用下，這本書已經(jīng)斑駁泛黃。我偶爾會把它借給對我在辦公桌上放這樣一本破舊的書感到好奇的人，不過我先要令人哭笑不得地讓他們鄭重承諾，無論花多長時間，一定要真的讀這本書，并且在讀完之后把它還給我。

1. martial law：指菲律賓第六任總統(tǒng)費迪南德·馬科斯（Ferdinand Maros）于1972年9月21日頒布的軍事戒嚴令。當時，已連任兩屆總統(tǒng)的馬科斯為實現(xiàn)獨裁的目的，決意要打破憲法對總統(tǒng)任期的限制，因此于1972年9月21日以打擊游擊隊為名，宣布全國戒嚴，采取了中止憲法、解散國會、禁止一切政黨活動、禁止公眾集會、查封一切媒體、中止人身保護令等措施。

2. roving reporter：流動記者

3. rupture [?r?pt??（r）] n. （關(guān)系的）裂痕，破裂，斷絕

4. Emilie Loring：艾米莉·洛林（1864～1951），20世紀美國多產(chǎn)的言情小說家，從50歲才開始創(chuàng)作。

5. Barbara Cartland：芭芭拉·卡特蘭（1901～2000），20世紀英國的言情小說家，同時也是歷史學家和社會活動家，一生寫過700多本言情小說。

6. Jacqueline Susann：杰奎琳·蘇珊（1918～1994），美國小說家，代表作為《娃娃谷》（Valley of the Dolls）。

7. chuck [t??k] vt. （隨意或胡亂地）丟，扔，拋

8. serendipity [?ser?n?d?p?ti] n. （意外發(fā)現(xiàn)或發(fā)明新奇或有價值事物的）運氣，走運，機緣湊巧

9. study [?st?di] n. [畫]習作；試畫；試作

10. solarize [?s??l?ra?z] vt. 使過度曝光

11. chiaroscuro [ki?ɑ?r??sk??r??] n. （繪畫中的）明暗對比法，明暗效果

12. leaf through：翻閱；瀏覽

13. furtively [?f??t?vli] adv. 偷偷摸摸地；鬼鬼祟祟地；秘密地

14. throes [θr??z] n. [復(fù)] （尤指最后階段的）困境，痛苦

15. illicit [??l?s?t] adj. （尤指從社會習俗等角度考量）不正當?shù)?，非法?/p>

16. irretrievably [??r??tri?v?bli] adv. 無法挽救地；無法彌補地

17. trudge [tr?d?] vt. （尤指因疲憊或沮喪）拖著沉重的腳步走過，步履艱難地走過

18. twice or thrice：兩三次

19. habitué [（h）??b?t?ue?] n. 常客

20. dawdle over：慢吞吞地做；（在……）磨蹭。dawdle [?d??dl] vi. 閑逛；游蕩

21. pathetically [p??θet?kli] adv. 可憐地；令人憐憫地；悲慘地

22. Castilian [?kɑ?st?li?n] n. （以卡斯蒂利亞的西班牙方言為基礎(chǔ)的）標準西班牙語

23. flow and ebb：起起落落

24. archetypal [?ɑ?ki?ta?pl] adj. 典型的；有代表性的

25. The Leopard：《豹》，是意大利作家朱塞佩·迪蘭佩杜薩（Giuseppe di Lampedusa， 1896～1957）的代表作，曾獲得意大利斯特雷加文學獎，被譽為意大利文學史上承前啟后的杰作。

26. lace [le?s] n. 網(wǎng)眼織物；花邊；蕾絲

27. petticoat [?pet?k??t] n. 襯裙，裙子

28. leave sth. to the mercy of：任由……受擺布或折磨

29. devour [d??va??（r）] vt. 如饑似渴地閱讀；熱切地看

30. glutton [?ɡl?tn] n. 貪吃的人；食量大的人

31. practically [?pr?kt?kli] adv. 〈口〉幾乎，差不多

32. homage [?h?m?d?] n. 尊敬，敬意；崇敬

33. reverently [?rev?r?ntli] adv. 恭敬地，虔敬地

34. elegiac [?el??d?a??k] adj. 悲哀的；哀悼的；傷感的

35. at one with：與……意見一致

36. forlorn [f??l??n] adj. 破爛的，破舊的

37. tragicomically [?tr?d?i?k?m?kli] adv. 悲喜劇地

It is a very private story that I occasionally tell， but only to aspiring literary types， younger executives， and teenage bookworms who find time to ask me what is a good English-language book or novel to read. The story is about how， many years ago， I discovered Gabriel García Márquez in the romance section of a big bookstore at Claro M. Recto Avenue in Manila. It was shortly before or right after martial law1） had taken the life of the daily paper where I worked as a roving reporter2）， I cannot remember the exact date now. But there was Márquez， still a total stranger to me， in the Avon hardback edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude， enjoying in the same shelf the company of such rupture3）-and-heartbreak novelists as Emilie Loring4）， Barbara Cartland5）， and Jacqueline Susann6）. No， García Márquez did not get there as an occasional stray， chucked7） absentmindedly or insensitively into the shelf by some browser. If memory serves me well， the book had been actually misclassified and miscatalogued in the same genre as the more popular company it was keeping when I found it.

The reason why it got there was probably serendipity8） of the most sublime order， but I think you can dismiss that thought as just me imagining the whole thing in chronological reverse. A more plausible reason was that it had the green and grainy cover art of a naked man and woman in passionate embrace， which I later thought was the publishers well-intentioned attempt to make the Buendía familys otherwise unimaginable tragedies and grief more commercially acceptable. It was actually this somber study9） in solarized10） chiaroscuro11） that drew my eye to the book. When I began to leaf through12） it， however， furtively13） expecting some passages about women in the throes14） of illicit15） sex， I read something much more exciting， much more stimulating， and much more intriguing. “Many years later，” García Márquez began， “as he faced the firing squad， Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” A few passages later I was irretrievably16） sold to the book. I promptly paid for it， tearing the plastic wrapping no sooner had the sales clerk sealed it， and started to read as I trudged17） the sidewalk on my way to my apartment somewhere in the city.

When I had read the book twice or thrice18） and still couldnt get over the thrill of the discovery， I excitedly recommended and lent it to a broadcast acquaintance at the old National Press Club. I cant remember now who the borrower was， but he was one of those press club habitués19） who would dawdle over20） beer or gin tonic at the bar till the midnight closing song-and-piano piece was over. What I do remember is that he never returned it to me. He assured me， however， that he had read it and enjoyed it so much that he could not resist lending it to someone—was it Carmen Guerrero-Nakpil or the late Renato Constantino？—who in turn lent it to someone who lent it to someone until finally the chain in the lending was lost. The last I heard from the original borrower was that the book had been passed on to an English Lit. professor at the University of the Philippines， where a few years later I was to learn that it had become mandatory reading in its English graduate school.

Being pathetically21） inept in Spanish I could never really know what Castilian22） or Colombian idioms I missed in the English translation， but the English-language García Márquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude truly set my mind on fire. He lit in me a tiny flame at first， then a silent fire for language that burned even brighter with the passing of the years. He was not only robust and masterful in his prose but devastatingly penetrating in his insights about the flow and ebb23） of life in the archetypal24） South American town of Macondo. Not since I chanced upon a battered copy of The Leopard25） by the Italian writer Giuseppe di Lampedusa two years earlier， this time a real stray in a smaller bookstore nearby， had I seen such soaring yet quietly majestic writing. Here is García Márquez at his surreal best： “Fernanda felt a delicate wind of light pull the sheets out of her hands and open them up wide. Amaranta felt a mysterious trembling in the lace26） on her petticoats27） as she tried to grasp the sheet so that she would not fall down at the instant when Remedios the Beauty began to rise. ?rsula， almost blind at the time， was the only person who was sufficiently calm to identify the nature of that determined wind and she left the sheets to the mercy of28） the light as she watched Remedios the Beauty waving goodbye in the midst of the sheets of the flapping sheets that rose up with her …” With prose like this I became a García Márquez pilgrim， re-reading One Hundred Years of Solitude countless times and devouring29）， like an adolescent glutton30）， practically31） all of his novels and short-story collections in the years that followed.

Many years later， in 1982， I was to discover in the morning papers that García Márquez had so deservedly won the Nobel Prize for literature. I was so happy for the new Nobel Laureate and for myself， and I no longer thought anymore of ever recovering that first copy of him that I had the pleasure of retrieving from the company where it obviously didnt belong. In homage32） I went back to the bookstore where I first found García Márquez， quietly and almost reverently33） picking up a new Picador paperback edition of him. Its cover art was no longer the man and woman in the deathless embrace， but this time an image more faithful to the elemental truth of the book： the whole Buendía family in a portrait of domestic but elegiac34） simplicity， at one and at peace with35） the chickens and shrubs and flowers that gave them sustenance， awaiting the last of the one hundred years allotted to them on earth.

The book is mottled with age and yellow with paper acid now. Now and then I would lend it to a soul that is intrigued why I would keep such a forlorn36） book on my office desk， but only after tragicomically37） extracting an elaborate pledge that he or she would really read it and give it back to me no matter how long it took to finish it.

這是個私密的故事，我很少對外人提及，只是偶爾對有抱負的文學青年、年輕的管理者和青少年“書蟲”——那些會抽出時間問我有哪些值得一讀的英文書或小說的人——講起。故事是關(guān)于多年前我是如何在馬尼拉的克拉羅·M·雷克托大街一家大型書店的愛情小說類專區(qū)里發(fā)現(xiàn)加夫列爾·加西亞·馬爾克斯的。當時正值我做流動記者時供職的那家日報因為軍事戒嚴令而即將關(guān)閉之時，又或是剛剛關(guān)閉之后，我現(xiàn)在已記不起具體的日期了。但是，在擺放著艾米莉·洛林、芭芭拉·卡特蘭和杰奎琳·蘇珊等擅長描寫失戀和心碎題材的作家作品的書架上，我看到了馬爾克斯的著作——埃文出版社出版的《百年孤獨》精裝本，當時我還從未聽說過他的名字。不，加西亞·馬爾克斯的書在那兒不是因為偶然被放錯了地方，不是被顧客翻看后漫不經(jīng)心或隨手扔在書架上的。如果我沒有記錯，在我看到這本書時，它其實是由于圖書分類與編目錯誤才與旁邊那些更為通俗的小說歸為一類的。

這本書出現(xiàn)在那里或許是因為最湊巧的機緣巧合，不過我想你對此不必當真，僅把這當成是我從后往前想象出整件事情而已。更為合理的解釋是，這本書紋理清晰的綠色封面上印著一對熱烈擁抱的裸體男女，事后想來，我覺得那是出版商一個善意的嘗試，希望借此把布恩迪亞家族原本令人無法想象的不幸和苦難表現(xiàn)得更易被購買者接受。實際上，這本書最初吸引我眼球的正是它那因曝光過度而明暗對比強烈、色調(diào)黯淡的封面圖案?？墒牵斘夷闷饡鴣聿莶莘?，暗中期待著能看到一些描寫女性在不倫關(guān)系中痛苦掙扎的段落時，我卻讀到了更為激動人心、更加令人振奮和更加引人入勝的文字?！霸S多年后，”加西亞·馬爾克斯在開篇中寫道，“面對著行刑隊，奧雷里亞諾·布恩迪亞上校將會想起父親帶他去看冰的那個遙遠的午后?！弊x了幾段之后，我已不可救藥地被這本書迷住了。我當即掏錢買下它，迫不及待地撕開店員剛剛包上的塑料紙，一邊沿著人行道邁著沉重的步伐走向位于城市某處的我的公寓，一邊讀了起來。

我把這本書讀過兩三遍之后，當初發(fā)現(xiàn)它時的激動心情仍然難以平復(fù)，于是我興奮地向昔日的全國記者俱樂部里一個在電臺工作的熟人推薦了這本書，并把書借給了他。我已經(jīng)不記得這個借書人是誰了，不過他是記者俱樂部的?？?，是那種在酒吧慢悠悠地喝著啤酒或杜松子酒，直到午夜時分作為結(jié)束曲的鋼琴彈唱終了方肯離開的人。我準確記得的是他從未把書還給我。不過，他向我保證說，他讀了這本書，并且因為太喜歡了，就忍不住又把它借給了別人——是卡門·格雷羅-納克皮爾還是已故的雷納托·康斯坦蒂諾？——這些人又繼續(xù)把書轉(zhuǎn)借出去，以至于到了最后，書的下落已無跡可尋。我從最初的借閱者那里最后獲得的消息是，書已經(jīng)傳到了菲律賓大學一位英語文學教授的手中。數(shù)年后我從那里得知，這本書已被列入該校英語系研究生的必讀書目了。

可惜我的西班牙語實在不靈光，我將永遠也無從知曉，在英譯本中我錯過了哪些西班牙和哥倫比亞的習語，但是在英文版《百年孤獨》中，加西亞·馬爾克斯著實點燃了我的激情。起初，他在我心里播下微弱的星星之火，繼而，又點燃了我對語言無聲的熱情之火，隨著歲月的流逝，這團熱情的火焰越燒越熾烈。他的文風不僅雄健有力，技巧純熟，而且對馬孔多這個典型的南美小鎮(zhèn)中生命的盛衰起伏有著令人折服的敏銳洞察力。兩年前，我在附近一家規(guī)模較小的書店里偶然發(fā)現(xiàn)了一本殘破的意大利作家朱塞佩·迪蘭佩杜薩的作品《豹》——那本書是真的被放錯了地方，自那之后，我還未曾見到過如此自在縱橫而又莊嚴宏大的作品。這是處于超現(xiàn)實主義創(chuàng)作巔峰時期的加西亞·馬爾克斯筆下的文字：“費爾南達感到光像一陣輕柔的風，把床單從她手里抽走并將它們?nèi)归_。阿瑪蘭塔試圖抓住床單，以免在美人兒雷梅迪奧斯開始上升的瞬間自己會摔倒，那一刻她感到裙子的蕾絲花邊在神秘地震顫。當時幾近失明的烏爾蘇拉是唯一一個十分鎮(zhèn)定的人，她認出了這股意志堅決的風的本質(zhì)，看著美人兒雷梅迪奧斯在床單中間、在隨之一起飄升的床單中間向她揮手道別，烏爾蘇拉放開床單，任憑光將它們帶走……”正是這樣的文字讓我成為加西亞·馬爾克斯虔誠的信徒，在后來的歲月中，我不僅將《百年孤獨》重讀了無數(shù)遍，而且像個青春期食欲旺盛的少年一樣，如饑似渴地把他所有的小說和短篇故事集幾乎都讀完了。

許多年過去了，1982年我從早報上得知，加西亞·馬爾克斯獲得了諾貝爾文學獎，真是實至名歸。我為這位新晉的諾貝爾獎得主感到高興，也為自己感到高興。至于最初那本我有幸從明顯不屬于它的位置上發(fā)現(xiàn)的馬爾克斯的書，我也徹底放棄了找回來的打算。懷著敬意，我再次來到第一次發(fā)現(xiàn)加西亞·馬爾克斯的那家書店，輕輕地、近乎虔誠地拿起一本騎馬斗牛士出版社新出版的平裝本。書的封面不再是一對男女永恒的擁抱，取而代之的是一幅更加忠實于小說的基本事實的畫面：一張布恩迪亞家族的全家福，照片是在家里拍的，散發(fā)著憂傷與質(zhì)樸的氣息，他們與周圍那些為他們提供生計的雞、灌木和鮮花構(gòu)成了一幅和諧統(tǒng)一的圖景，等待著授予他們一百年塵世生活的最后時刻的來臨。

如今，在歲月和紙酸的雙重作用下，這本書已經(jīng)斑駁泛黃。我偶爾會把它借給對我在辦公桌上放這樣一本破舊的書感到好奇的人，不過我先要令人哭笑不得地讓他們鄭重承諾，無論花多長時間，一定要真的讀這本書，并且在讀完之后把它還給我。