How I Discovered Gabriel我与《百年孤独》的美妙邂逅
2014-08-01NewOrientalEnglish
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.
这是个私密的故事，我很少对外人提及，只是偶尔对有抱负的文学青年、年轻的管理者和青少年“书虫”——那些会抽出时间问我有哪些值得一读的英文书或小说的人——讲起。故事是关于多年前我是如何在马尼拉的克拉罗·M·雷克托大街一家大型书店的爱情小说类专区里发现加夫列尔·加西亚·马尔克斯的。当时正值我做流动记者时供职的那家日报因为军事戒严令而即将关闭之时，又或是刚刚关闭之后，我现在已记不起具体的日期了。但是，在摆放着艾米莉·洛林、芭芭拉·卡特兰和杰奎琳·苏珊等擅长描写失恋和心碎题材的作家作品的书架上，我看到了马尔克斯的著作——埃文出版社出版的《百年孤独》精装本，当时我还从未听说过他的名字。不，加西亚·马尔克斯的书在那儿不是因为偶然被放错了地方，不是被顾客翻看后漫不经心或随手扔在书架上的。如果我没有记错，在我看到这本书时，它其实是由于图书分类与编目错误才与旁边那些更为通俗的小说归为一类的。
这本书出现在那里或许是因为最凑巧的机缘巧合，不过我想你对此不必当真，仅把这当成是我从后往前想象出整件事情而已。更为合理的解释是，这本书纹理清晰的绿色封面上印着一对热烈拥抱的裸体男女，事后想来，我觉得那是出版商一个善意的尝试，希望借此把布恩迪亚家族原本令人无法想象的不幸和苦难表现得更易被购买者接受。实际上，这本书最初吸引我眼球的正是它那因曝光过度而明暗对比强烈、色调黯淡的封面图案。可是，当我拿起书来草草翻看，暗中期待着能看到一些描写女性在不伦关系中痛苦挣扎的段落时，我却读到了更为激动人心、更加令人振奋和更加引人入胜的文字。“许多年后，”加西亚·马尔克斯在开篇中写道，“面对着行刑队，奥雷里亚诺·布恩迪亚上校将会想起父亲带他去看冰的那个遥远的午后。”读了几段之后，我已不可救药地被这本书迷住了。我当即掏钱买下它，迫不及待地撕开店员刚刚包上的塑料纸，一边沿着人行道迈着沉重的步伐走向位于城市某处的我的公寓，一边读了起来。
我把这本书读过两三遍之后，当初发现它时的激动心情仍然难以平复，于是我兴奋地向昔日的全国记者俱乐部里一个在电台工作的熟人推荐了这本书，并把书借给了他。我已经不记得这个借书人是谁了，不过他是记者俱乐部的常客，是那种在酒吧慢悠悠地喝着啤酒或杜松子酒，直到午夜时分作为结束曲的钢琴弹唱终了方肯离开的人。我准确记得的是他从未把书还给我。不过，他向我保证说，他读了这本书，并且因为太喜欢了，就忍不住又把它借给了别人——是卡门·格雷罗-纳克皮尔还是已故的雷纳托·康斯坦蒂诺？——这些人又继续把书转借出去，以至于到了最后，书的下落已无迹可寻。我从最初的借阅者那里最后获得的消息是，书已经传到了菲律宾大学一位英语文学教授的手中。数年后我从那里得知，这本书已被列入该校英语系研究生的必读书目了。
可惜我的西班牙语实在不灵光，我将永远也无从知晓，在英译本中我错过了哪些西班牙和哥伦比亚的习语，但是在英文版《百年孤独》中，加西亚·马尔克斯着实点燃了我的激情。起初，他在我心里播下微弱的星星之火，继而，又点燃了我对语言无声的热情之火，随着岁月的流逝，这团热情的火焰越烧越炽烈。他的文风不仅雄健有力，技巧纯熟，而且对马孔多这个典型的南美小镇中生命的盛衰起伏有着令人折服的敏锐洞察力。两年前，我在附近一家规模较小的书店里偶然发现了一本残破的意大利作家朱塞佩·迪兰佩杜萨的作品《豹》——那本书是真的被放错了地方，自那之后，我还未曾见到过如此自在纵横而又庄严宏大的作品。这是处于超现实主义创作巅峰时期的加西亚·马尔克斯笔下的文字：“费尔南达感到光像一阵轻柔的风，把床单从她手里抽走并将它们全幅展开。阿玛兰塔试图抓住床单，以免在美人儿雷梅迪奥斯开始上升的瞬间自己会摔倒，那一刻她感到裙子的蕾丝花边在神秘地震颤。当时几近失明的乌尔苏拉是唯一一个十分镇定的人，她认出了这股意志坚决的风的本质，看着美人儿雷梅迪奥斯在床单中间、在随之一起飘升的床单中间向她挥手道别，乌尔苏拉放开床单，任凭光将它们带走……”正是这样的文字让我成为加西亚·马尔克斯虔诚的信徒，在后来的岁月中，我不仅将《百年孤独》重读了无数遍，而且像个青春期食欲旺盛的少年一样，如饥似渴地把他所有的小说和短篇故事集几乎都读完了。
许多年过去了，1982年我从早报上得知，加西亚·马尔克斯获得了诺贝尔文学奖，真是实至名归。我为这位新晋的诺贝尔奖得主感到高兴，也为自己感到高兴。至于最初那本我有幸从明显不属于它的位置上发现的马尔克斯的书，我也彻底放弃了找回来的打算。怀着敬意，我再次来到第一次发现加西亚·马尔克斯的那家书店，轻轻地、近乎虔诚地拿起一本骑马斗牛士出版社新出版的平装本。书的封面不再是一对男女永恒的拥抱，取而代之的是一幅更加忠实于小说的基本事实的画面：一张布恩迪亚家族的全家福，照片是在家里拍的，散发着忧伤与质朴的气息，他们与周围那些为他们提供生计的鸡、灌木和鲜花构成了一幅和谐统一的图景，等待着授予他们一百年尘世生活的最后时刻的来临。
如今，在岁月和纸酸的双重作用下，这本书已经斑驳泛黄。我偶尔会把它借给对我在办公桌上放这样一本破旧的书感到好奇的人，不过我先要令人哭笑不得地让他们郑重承诺，无论花多长时间，一定要真的读这本书，并且在读完之后把它还给我。
1. martial law：指菲律宾第六任总统费迪南德·马科斯（Ferdinand Maros）于1972年9月21日颁布的军事戒严令。当时，已连任两届总统的马科斯为实现独裁的目的，决意要打破宪法对总统任期的限制，因此于1972年9月21日以打击游击队为名，宣布全国戒严，采取了中止宪法、解散国会、禁止一切政党活动、禁止公众集会、查封一切媒体、中止人身保护令等措施。
2. roving reporter：流动记者
3. rupture [?r?pt??（r）] n. （关系的）裂痕，破裂，断绝
4. Emilie Loring：艾米莉·洛林（1864～1951），20世纪美国多产的言情小说家，从50岁才开始创作。
5. Barbara Cartland：芭芭拉·卡特兰（1901～2000），20世纪英国的言情小说家，同时也是历史学家和社会活动家，一生写过700多本言情小说。
6. Jacqueline Susann：杰奎琳·苏珊（1918～1994），美国小说家，代表作为《娃娃谷》（Valley of the Dolls）。
7. chuck [t??k] vt. （随意或胡乱地）丢，扔，抛
8. serendipity [?ser?n?d?p?ti] n. （意外发现或发明新奇或有价值事物的）运气，走运，机缘凑巧
9. study [?st?di] n. [画]习作；试画；试作
10. solarize [?s??l?ra?z] vt. 使过度曝光
11. chiaroscuro [ki?ɑ?r??sk??r??] n. （绘画中的）明暗对比法，明暗效果
12. leaf through：翻阅；浏览
13. furtively [?f??t?vli] adv. 偷偷摸摸地；鬼鬼祟祟地；秘密地
14. throes [θr??z] n. [复] （尤指最后阶段的）困境，痛苦
15. illicit [??l?s?t] adj. （尤指从社会习俗等角度考量）不正当的，非法的
16. irretrievably [??r??tri?v?bli] adv. 无法挽救地；无法弥补地
17. trudge [tr?d?] vt. （尤指因疲惫或沮丧）拖着沉重的脚步走过，步履艰难地走过
18. twice or thrice：两三次
19. habitué [（h）??b?t?ue?] n. 常客
20. dawdle over：慢吞吞地做；（在……）磨蹭。dawdle [?d??dl] vi. 闲逛；游荡
21. pathetically [p??θet?kli] adv. 可怜地；令人怜悯地；悲惨地
22. Castilian [?kɑ?st?li?n] n. （以卡斯蒂利亚的西班牙方言为基础的）标准西班牙语
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·迪兰佩杜萨（Giuseppe di Lampedusa， 1896～1957）的代表作，曾获得意大利斯特雷加文学奖，被誉为意大利文学史上承前启后的杰作。
26. lace [le?s] n. 网眼织物；花边；蕾丝
27. petticoat [?pet?k??t] n. 衬裙，裙子
28. leave sth. to the mercy of：任由……受摆布或折磨
29. devour [d??va??（r）] vt. 如饥似渴地阅读；热切地看
30. glutton [?ɡl?tn] n. 贪吃的人；食量大的人
31. practically [?pr?kt?kli] adv. 〈口〉几乎，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；伤感的
35. at one with：与……意见一致
36. forlorn [f??l??n] adj. 破烂的，破旧的
37. tragicomically [?tr?d?i?k?m?kli] adv. 悲喜剧地
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.
这是个私密的故事，我很少对外人提及，只是偶尔对有抱负的文学青年、年轻的管理者和青少年“书虫”——那些会抽出时间问我有哪些值得一读的英文书或小说的人——讲起。故事是关于多年前我是如何在马尼拉的克拉罗·M·雷克托大街一家大型书店的爱情小说类专区里发现加夫列尔·加西亚·马尔克斯的。当时正值我做流动记者时供职的那家日报因为军事戒严令而即将关闭之时，又或是刚刚关闭之后，我现在已记不起具体的日期了。但是，在摆放着艾米莉·洛林、芭芭拉·卡特兰和杰奎琳·苏珊等擅长描写失恋和心碎题材的作家作品的书架上，我看到了马尔克斯的著作——埃文出版社出版的《百年孤独》精装本，当时我还从未听说过他的名字。不，加西亚·马尔克斯的书在那儿不是因为偶然被放错了地方，不是被顾客翻看后漫不经心或随手扔在书架上的。如果我没有记错，在我看到这本书时，它其实是由于图书分类与编目错误才与旁边那些更为通俗的小说归为一类的。
这本书出现在那里或许是因为最凑巧的机缘巧合，不过我想你对此不必当真，仅把这当成是我从后往前想象出整件事情而已。更为合理的解释是，这本书纹理清晰的绿色封面上印着一对热烈拥抱的裸体男女，事后想来，我觉得那是出版商一个善意的尝试，希望借此把布恩迪亚家族原本令人无法想象的不幸和苦难表现得更易被购买者接受。实际上，这本书最初吸引我眼球的正是它那因曝光过度而明暗对比强烈、色调黯淡的封面图案。可是，当我拿起书来草草翻看，暗中期待着能看到一些描写女性在不伦关系中痛苦挣扎的段落时，我却读到了更为激动人心、更加令人振奋和更加引人入胜的文字。“许多年后，”加西亚·马尔克斯在开篇中写道，“面对着行刑队，奥雷里亚诺·布恩迪亚上校将会想起父亲带他去看冰的那个遥远的午后。”读了几段之后，我已不可救药地被这本书迷住了。我当即掏钱买下它，迫不及待地撕开店员刚刚包上的塑料纸，一边沿着人行道迈着沉重的步伐走向位于城市某处的我的公寓，一边读了起来。
我把这本书读过两三遍之后，当初发现它时的激动心情仍然难以平复，于是我兴奋地向昔日的全国记者俱乐部里一个在电台工作的熟人推荐了这本书，并把书借给了他。我已经不记得这个借书人是谁了，不过他是记者俱乐部的常客，是那种在酒吧慢悠悠地喝着啤酒或杜松子酒，直到午夜时分作为结束曲的钢琴弹唱终了方肯离开的人。我准确记得的是他从未把书还给我。不过，他向我保证说，他读了这本书，并且因为太喜欢了，就忍不住又把它借给了别人——是卡门·格雷罗-纳克皮尔还是已故的雷纳托·康斯坦蒂诺？——这些人又继续把书转借出去，以至于到了最后，书的下落已无迹可寻。我从最初的借阅者那里最后获得的消息是，书已经传到了菲律宾大学一位英语文学教授的手中。数年后我从那里得知，这本书已被列入该校英语系研究生的必读书目了。
可惜我的西班牙语实在不灵光，我将永远也无从知晓，在英译本中我错过了哪些西班牙和哥伦比亚的习语，但是在英文版《百年孤独》中，加西亚·马尔克斯着实点燃了我的激情。起初，他在我心里播下微弱的星星之火，继而，又点燃了我对语言无声的热情之火，随着岁月的流逝，这团热情的火焰越烧越炽烈。他的文风不仅雄健有力，技巧纯熟，而且对马孔多这个典型的南美小镇中生命的盛衰起伏有着令人折服的敏锐洞察力。两年前，我在附近一家规模较小的书店里偶然发现了一本残破的意大利作家朱塞佩·迪兰佩杜萨的作品《豹》——那本书是真的被放错了地方，自那之后，我还未曾见到过如此自在纵横而又庄严宏大的作品。这是处于超现实主义创作巅峰时期的加西亚·马尔克斯笔下的文字：“费尔南达感到光像一阵轻柔的风，把床单从她手里抽走并将它们全幅展开。阿玛兰塔试图抓住床单，以免在美人儿雷梅迪奥斯开始上升的瞬间自己会摔倒，那一刻她感到裙子的蕾丝花边在神秘地震颤。当时几近失明的乌尔苏拉是唯一一个十分镇定的人，她认出了这股意志坚决的风的本质，看着美人儿雷梅迪奥斯在床单中间、在随之一起飘升的床单中间向她挥手道别，乌尔苏拉放开床单，任凭光将它们带走……”正是这样的文字让我成为加西亚·马尔克斯虔诚的信徒，在后来的岁月中，我不仅将《百年孤独》重读了无数遍，而且像个青春期食欲旺盛的少年一样，如饥似渴地把他所有的小说和短篇故事集几乎都读完了。
许多年过去了，1982年我从早报上得知，加西亚·马尔克斯获得了诺贝尔文学奖，真是实至名归。我为这位新晋的诺贝尔奖得主感到高兴，也为自己感到高兴。至于最初那本我有幸从明显不属于它的位置上发现的马尔克斯的书，我也彻底放弃了找回来的打算。怀着敬意，我再次来到第一次发现加西亚·马尔克斯的那家书店，轻轻地、近乎虔诚地拿起一本骑马斗牛士出版社新出版的平装本。书的封面不再是一对男女永恒的拥抱，取而代之的是一幅更加忠实于小说的基本事实的画面：一张布恩迪亚家族的全家福，照片是在家里拍的，散发着忧伤与质朴的气息，他们与周围那些为他们提供生计的鸡、灌木和鲜花构成了一幅和谐统一的图景，等待着授予他们一百年尘世生活的最后时刻的来临。
如今，在岁月和纸酸的双重作用下，这本书已经斑驳泛黄。我偶尔会把它借给对我在办公桌上放这样一本破旧的书感到好奇的人，不过我先要令人哭笑不得地让他们郑重承诺，无论花多长时间，一定要真的读这本书，并且在读完之后把它还给我。
1. martial law：指菲律宾第六任总统费迪南德·马科斯（Ferdinand Maros）于1972年9月21日颁布的军事戒严令。当时，已连任两届总统的马科斯为实现独裁的目的，决意要打破宪法对总统任期的限制，因此于1972年9月21日以打击游击队为名，宣布全国戒严，采取了中止宪法、解散国会、禁止一切政党活动、禁止公众集会、查封一切媒体、中止人身保护令等措施。
2. roving reporter：流动记者
3. rupture [?r?pt??（r）] n. （关系的）裂痕，破裂，断绝
4. Emilie Loring：艾米莉·洛林（1864～1951），20世纪美国多产的言情小说家，从50岁才开始创作。
5. Barbara Cartland：芭芭拉·卡特兰（1901～2000），20世纪英国的言情小说家，同时也是历史学家和社会活动家，一生写过700多本言情小说。
6. Jacqueline Susann：杰奎琳·苏珊（1918～1994），美国小说家，代表作为《娃娃谷》（Valley of the Dolls）。
7. chuck [t??k] vt. （随意或胡乱地）丢，扔，抛
8. serendipity [?ser?n?d?p?ti] n. （意外发现或发明新奇或有价值事物的）运气，走运，机缘凑巧
9. study [?st?di] n. [画]习作；试画；试作
10. solarize [?s??l?ra?z] vt. 使过度曝光
11. chiaroscuro [ki?ɑ?r??sk??r??] n. （绘画中的）明暗对比法，明暗效果
12. leaf through：翻阅；浏览
13. furtively [?f??t?vli] adv. 偷偷摸摸地；鬼鬼祟祟地；秘密地
14. throes [θr??z] n. [复] （尤指最后阶段的）困境，痛苦
15. illicit [??l?s?t] adj. （尤指从社会习俗等角度考量）不正当的，非法的
16. irretrievably [??r??tri?v?bli] adv. 无法挽救地；无法弥补地
17. trudge [tr?d?] vt. （尤指因疲惫或沮丧）拖着沉重的脚步走过，步履艰难地走过
18. twice or thrice：两三次
19. habitué [（h）??b?t?ue?] n. 常客
20. dawdle over：慢吞吞地做；（在……）磨蹭。dawdle [?d??dl] vi. 闲逛；游荡
21. pathetically [p??θet?kli] adv. 可怜地；令人怜悯地；悲惨地
22. Castilian [?kɑ?st?li?n] n. （以卡斯蒂利亚的西班牙方言为基础的）标准西班牙语
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·迪兰佩杜萨（Giuseppe di Lampedusa， 1896～1957）的代表作，曾获得意大利斯特雷加文学奖，被誉为意大利文学史上承前启后的杰作。
26. lace [le?s] n. 网眼织物；花边；蕾丝
27. petticoat [?pet?k??t] n. 衬裙，裙子
28. leave sth. to the mercy of：任由……受摆布或折磨
29. devour [d??va??（r）] vt. 如饥似渴地阅读；热切地看
30. glutton [?ɡl?tn] n. 贪吃的人；食量大的人
31. practically [?pr?kt?kli] adv. 〈口〉几乎，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；伤感的
35. at one with：与……意见一致
36. forlorn [f??l??n] adj. 破烂的，破旧的
37. tragicomically [?tr?d?i?k?m?kli] adv. 悲喜剧地
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.
这是个私密的故事，我很少对外人提及，只是偶尔对有抱负的文学青年、年轻的管理者和青少年“书虫”——那些会抽出时间问我有哪些值得一读的英文书或小说的人——讲起。故事是关于多年前我是如何在马尼拉的克拉罗·M·雷克托大街一家大型书店的爱情小说类专区里发现加夫列尔·加西亚·马尔克斯的。当时正值我做流动记者时供职的那家日报因为军事戒严令而即将关闭之时，又或是刚刚关闭之后，我现在已记不起具体的日期了。但是，在摆放着艾米莉·洛林、芭芭拉·卡特兰和杰奎琳·苏珊等擅长描写失恋和心碎题材的作家作品的书架上，我看到了马尔克斯的著作——埃文出版社出版的《百年孤独》精装本，当时我还从未听说过他的名字。不，加西亚·马尔克斯的书在那儿不是因为偶然被放错了地方，不是被顾客翻看后漫不经心或随手扔在书架上的。如果我没有记错，在我看到这本书时，它其实是由于图书分类与编目错误才与旁边那些更为通俗的小说归为一类的。
这本书出现在那里或许是因为最凑巧的机缘巧合，不过我想你对此不必当真，仅把这当成是我从后往前想象出整件事情而已。更为合理的解释是，这本书纹理清晰的绿色封面上印着一对热烈拥抱的裸体男女，事后想来，我觉得那是出版商一个善意的尝试，希望借此把布恩迪亚家族原本令人无法想象的不幸和苦难表现得更易被购买者接受。实际上，这本书最初吸引我眼球的正是它那因曝光过度而明暗对比强烈、色调黯淡的封面图案。可是，当我拿起书来草草翻看，暗中期待着能看到一些描写女性在不伦关系中痛苦挣扎的段落时，我却读到了更为激动人心、更加令人振奋和更加引人入胜的文字。“许多年后，”加西亚·马尔克斯在开篇中写道，“面对着行刑队，奥雷里亚诺·布恩迪亚上校将会想起父亲带他去看冰的那个遥远的午后。”读了几段之后，我已不可救药地被这本书迷住了。我当即掏钱买下它，迫不及待地撕开店员刚刚包上的塑料纸，一边沿着人行道迈着沉重的步伐走向位于城市某处的我的公寓，一边读了起来。
我把这本书读过两三遍之后，当初发现它时的激动心情仍然难以平复，于是我兴奋地向昔日的全国记者俱乐部里一个在电台工作的熟人推荐了这本书，并把书借给了他。我已经不记得这个借书人是谁了，不过他是记者俱乐部的常客，是那种在酒吧慢悠悠地喝着啤酒或杜松子酒，直到午夜时分作为结束曲的钢琴弹唱终了方肯离开的人。我准确记得的是他从未把书还给我。不过，他向我保证说，他读了这本书，并且因为太喜欢了，就忍不住又把它借给了别人——是卡门·格雷罗-纳克皮尔还是已故的雷纳托·康斯坦蒂诺？——这些人又继续把书转借出去，以至于到了最后，书的下落已无迹可寻。我从最初的借阅者那里最后获得的消息是，书已经传到了菲律宾大学一位英语文学教授的手中。数年后我从那里得知，这本书已被列入该校英语系研究生的必读书目了。
可惜我的西班牙语实在不灵光，我将永远也无从知晓，在英译本中我错过了哪些西班牙和哥伦比亚的习语，但是在英文版《百年孤独》中，加西亚·马尔克斯着实点燃了我的激情。起初，他在我心里播下微弱的星星之火，继而，又点燃了我对语言无声的热情之火，随着岁月的流逝，这团热情的火焰越烧越炽烈。他的文风不仅雄健有力，技巧纯熟，而且对马孔多这个典型的南美小镇中生命的盛衰起伏有着令人折服的敏锐洞察力。两年前，我在附近一家规模较小的书店里偶然发现了一本残破的意大利作家朱塞佩·迪兰佩杜萨的作品《豹》——那本书是真的被放错了地方，自那之后，我还未曾见到过如此自在纵横而又庄严宏大的作品。这是处于超现实主义创作巅峰时期的加西亚·马尔克斯笔下的文字：“费尔南达感到光像一阵轻柔的风，把床单从她手里抽走并将它们全幅展开。阿玛兰塔试图抓住床单，以免在美人儿雷梅迪奥斯开始上升的瞬间自己会摔倒，那一刻她感到裙子的蕾丝花边在神秘地震颤。当时几近失明的乌尔苏拉是唯一一个十分镇定的人，她认出了这股意志坚决的风的本质，看着美人儿雷梅迪奥斯在床单中间、在随之一起飘升的床单中间向她挥手道别，乌尔苏拉放开床单，任凭光将它们带走……”正是这样的文字让我成为加西亚·马尔克斯虔诚的信徒，在后来的岁月中，我不仅将《百年孤独》重读了无数遍，而且像个青春期食欲旺盛的少年一样，如饥似渴地把他所有的小说和短篇故事集几乎都读完了。
许多年过去了，1982年我从早报上得知，加西亚·马尔克斯获得了诺贝尔文学奖，真是实至名归。我为这位新晋的诺贝尔奖得主感到高兴，也为自己感到高兴。至于最初那本我有幸从明显不属于它的位置上发现的马尔克斯的书，我也彻底放弃了找回来的打算。怀着敬意，我再次来到第一次发现加西亚·马尔克斯的那家书店，轻轻地、近乎虔诚地拿起一本骑马斗牛士出版社新出版的平装本。书的封面不再是一对男女永恒的拥抱，取而代之的是一幅更加忠实于小说的基本事实的画面：一张布恩迪亚家族的全家福，照片是在家里拍的，散发着忧伤与质朴的气息，他们与周围那些为他们提供生计的鸡、灌木和鲜花构成了一幅和谐统一的图景，等待着授予他们一百年尘世生活的最后时刻的来临。
如今，在岁月和纸酸的双重作用下，这本书已经斑驳泛黄。我偶尔会把它借给对我在办公桌上放这样一本破旧的书感到好奇的人，不过我先要令人哭笑不得地让他们郑重承诺，无论花多长时间，一定要真的读这本书，并且在读完之后把它还给我。
