Chapter 7 Chapter Four

The day Ariza saw in the cathedral courtyard Fermina, who was six months pregnant and looked like an upper-class lady, made up her unshakable determination to strive for fame and fortune in order to deserve her.He even disregarded the obstacle of her being married, because he made up his mind at the same time, as if the matter depended on Dr. Urbino for nothing.He did not know when or how he would die, but he had planned it as an inevitable event, and he resolved to wait with neither hurry nor ostentation until the end of the world. He starts from scratch.He came unannounced to the office of his uncle Leon XII, the chairman and general manager of the Caribbean Inland Waterway Company, and expressed his willingness to obey orders.Uncle was quite dissatisfied with him casually giving up the good job of being a telegraph operator in Laiwa Village, but he believed what his nephew said, people are not the same from the womb, life will force him to repeat himself again and again. Reborn.In addition, the brother's widow died in the first year, with a bitter hatred, but left no inheritance.So, he still gave the prodigal nephew a job.

Leon XII's decision is unique.There is a hidden lunatic temper in the body of this black-hearted businessman. He can spit limoncello like a spring in the desert of Guajira, or sing "in this dark world" with a heart-piercing voice. In the Grave" made people cry earth-shatteringly at funerals.With his curly hair, his thick lips protruding like a Faun, and with the addition of a lyre and a crown of laurels, he was exactly like the creepy tyrant Nero in Christian mythology.Apart from managing his battered ships, which remained afloat only through the inattention of Death, and dealing with the increasing problems of river transportation, he devoted all his spare time to enriching his lyrical songs.Singing at funerals is his favorite thing.His singing is like that of a rowing convict, without any formal training, but his singing is very moving.Someone had told him that Enrico Caruso's voice could shatter vases, and for many years he tried to imitate him, even trying to shatter glass windows with his voice.

His friends brought him back the thinnest vases they could find while traveling around the world, and organized parties so that he could finally realize his highest dreams, which never came true.But, like the great Caruso who shattered the flacon, there was a tenderness in his thunderous voice that could break the hearts of his listeners, and that is why he was so popular at funerals.Only once, during his whimsical singing of the beautiful tear-jerking elegy from Luciana, America, "When You Go Up to Heaven," was he choked up by a priest who couldn't understand the Reformation.

In this way, singing and singing Naples operas and serenades, his creative ability and invincible dedication made him a shining and prominent figure in the most prosperous period of inland water transport.Like his two deceased elder brothers, he was self-made, though branded as illegitimate children, and they were never claimed by anyone, they all rose to greatness.They were the outstanding figures of the so-called "counter dignitaries" at that time, and the commercial club was the refuge of the "counter dignitaries".However, even when he had the capital to live the life of a Roman emperor who looked similar to him, his uncle Leon XII still lived in the old city with his wife and three sons, living a frugal life and crowded In a humble house, he couldn't get rid of the bad name that was unjustly assigned to him for being greedy.His only luxury is simpler: a beach house two Spanish miles from his office, with nothing but six handmade stools, a water urn, and a hammock that hangs from the balcony for Sunday lying and thinking. furniture.Some people say he is a rich man, but no one describes himself as accurately as he does.

"It's not a rich man," he said. "I'm a rich poor man, and that's not the same thing at all." This eccentricity--someone had once praised it in a speech as a folly--made him see at a glance that in Florentino Ariza that no one had ever seen and never saw again.From the day Ariza, sullen and wasted twenty-seven years old, came to his office to ask for work, he put him through barracks-style ordeals that would bring the toughest men to their knees.But he failed to make his nephew quit.Uncle Leon XII never doubted that his nephew's perseverance did not stem from the need to earn a living, nor did he inherit his father's sternness, but from a kind of love ambition. There is no way to break this stoicism.

The worst was the first few years.He was appointed as the scribe in the general manager's office, which was obviously arranged for him because of the god's temple.It was Teugut - who was the former music teacher of his uncle Leon XII - who persuaded Leon XII to give his nephew a job as a copyist, because he was a tireless reader of literature,' although I read more bad books than good ones.Uncle Leon XII ignored the fact that his nephew was reading bad books. Teugut once said that he was the worst student in singing, and he sang so that the stone tablets in the tomb wept for it Well.

In any case, the point that the German made most casually was accurate, and Ariza wrote everything with passion, writing official documents as if they were love letters.Although he tried to avoid it, the shipping manifests rhymed with adversity, and everyday business correspondence became more lyrical and less authoritative.One day, his uncle came to his office in person, holding a stack of letters that he did not have the courage to sign his own name, and laid an ultimatum on him. "If you can't write a good business letter, then you can go to the docks and sweep the garbage," his uncle said to him.

Ariza accepted the challenge.He did his best to learn the brevity of commercial prose, imitating patterns in notarial records as intently as he had imitated fashionable poets.During this period of time, he spent all his space and time in the "Ghost Writer's Doorway", helping those uneducated lovers write love letters, venting the piles of accumulation in his heart that could not be used when writing customs reports A love story like the sea.Six months passed, and he racked his brains. Still failed to turn the neck of the incorrigible swan around.When his uncle Leon Twelve reprimanded him for the second time, he obeyed, but he was still a little ignorant.

"The only thing I'm interested in is love," he said. "Too bad," said his uncle to him, "is no love without shipping." Uncle fulfilled the threatening order to send him to the pier to clean up the garbage, and left him a way out, telling him that if he did well, he would be promoted step by step until he found a suitable home.Sure enough.No job, no matter how difficult or embarrassing, did not make him fall, nor did the meager salary discourage him, nor did he lose for a moment the instinct of fearlessness in the presence of arrogant superiors.Of course, he is not without fault. All the people who have worked with him have suffered from his seemingly weak but in reality arbitrariness that cannot be pulled back.Just as his uncle Leon XII had foreseen and hoped, during thirty years of sacrifice and tenacious struggle, he knew the first secret of the company.He has held all positions and in all positions he has shown admirable ability.He studied every thread in that mysterious meridian, which has much in common with the veins of poetry.However, he failed to get the coveted war medal: writing a decent business letter.Indeed, not a single one was written.He did not conceive, nor even perceive, that by his own life he proved what his father had said--who said to his last breath that no man had a better sense of smell than a poet, no mason more tenacious than a poet, No manager is more wily and dangerous than a poet.At least his uncle, Leon XII, told him about this. When his uncle was free, he always told him about his father. The uncle passed on his father's idea of ​​being a dreamer rather than an entrepreneur. over him.

His uncle told him that his father, Pio Quinto Loaíza, used the office more as a playground than as a workshop, and that he always scheduled things in the office to leave for work on Sundays, under the pretense of having receptions or Send a ship.What's more, he had an old boiler installed in the yard of the warehouse, with a whistle attached to it, and if his wife was paying attention to him, someone would blow the whistle on the navigation signal.Uncle Leon XII pondered for a while, and Florentino Ariza had formed the idea that, on a hot Sunday afternoon, something was going on at the desk in the half-opened office, and the father's wife was at home. Listen carefully, the farewell whistle of a ship that has never moved.By the time she found out about all this and accused her husband of his shameful behavior, it was too late, he was dead.She died many years after her husband, devastated by the pain of not having a son, and in her prayers she begged God to curse the illegitimate child forever.

The image of the father shook Florentino Ariza.His mother had told him that his father was an upright man, not very good at business, and that he went bankrupt in the inland waterway business because his elder brother worked closely with a German commodore, a pioneer in inland waterway shipping.The brothers are all illegitimate children of the same mother, the mother is a cook, and the brothers are born of her and different men, except that the name of the uncle Leon XII is named after the Pope who was in power when he was born. The rest of the names were her surname followed by a pope's name randomly chosen from the hagiography.The man named Florentino was the grandfather of all the brothers. The name Florentino, surpassing a whole generation of popes, was passed on to the son of Transito Ariza. Florentino Ariza kept a notebook of his father's love poems, some of which were inspired by Transito, each with a wounded heart on its brow.Two things surprised him.One is his father's unique font, which is exactly the same as his own, but he learned it by choosing his favorite font from many fonts in a copybook.The second is to find a line that he thought was his motto, but his father wrote it down in a notebook long before he was born: The only pain I feel about death is not being able to die for love. He also saw the only two photographs of his father.One, taken in Santa Fe, showed his father young, the same age he had been when he first saw him, in his overcoat as if inside a bear. He leans on the plinth of a statue that is all that remains of the loose leggings.The little boy standing next to his father was Uncle Leon XII, with a captain's cap on his head.In another photo, my father was with a group of soldiers. From his father, he knew which war it was in the years of war. His father had the longest shotgun, and the smell of gunpowder in his beard radiated from his whole body.Like the brothers, the father was a Liberal and a Masonic, yet he wanted his son to attend seminary.Florentino Ariza did not think that he resembled his father, as people said, who, according to his uncle Leon XII, also hated love letters.In short, the father in the photo is not like him, nor is he the same as the father in his memory, nor is he like the one his mother described—because of love, his mother beautified his father’s image—and he is not like his uncle Leon Twelve with his kindness. The image of the cruel and defaced father is different.However, many years later, Ariza discovered this similarity when combing his hair in the mirror, and only then did he understand that the day a person first looks like his father is when he begins to age. He didn't remember his father living on Ventanas Street.It seems to have been heard that he spent the night there for a time, when he and Transito first fell in love, but my father hadn't seen her since he was born. The baptismal register was our only valid ID for many years, and Ariza's baptismal register—issued in San Toribio—said only that he was the illegitimate daughter of an unmarried woman named Transito. illegitimate child. The father's name does not appear on the baptismal register, but he secretly provided for his son until his last day.This social status closed the seminary to Florentino Ariza, and at the same time allowed him to escape the obligation of military service in the cruelest war years of our country, because he was the only child of an unmarried mother. Every Friday, after school, he would sit in front of the office of the Caribbean Inland Shipping Company, flipping through the animal picture album that had been read thousands of times.Father walked into the office in the Akiko coat that Mother Transito had to give him later, without even looking at him, with the same expression on his face as St. John the Evangelist on the altar.Several hours passed, and when my father came out, he quietly handed him the living expenses for the next week.The father and son didn't say a word, not only because the father didn't want to say it, but also because he was afraid of him.One day, after waiting much longer than usual, my father came out and said to him when he gave the money, "Take it, and don't come here again." That was the last time he saw his father.He later learned that Uncle Leon Twelve—who was a decade younger than his father—continued to send money to Transito.After my father died of abdominal pain, my uncle took care of my mother.He didn't leave a single piece of paper, and he didn't have time to take any measures to protect his only son, the wild child. The tragedy of Ariza is that when he was a scribe in the Caribbean Inland Shipping Company, he couldn't let go of his lyrical feelings. He couldn't forget Fermina, and he never learned to let go of her when he was drafting the manuscript. Later, when he was transferred to another position, he was still full of emotions. In the midst of boredom, he had no choice but to give his love to those illiterate lovers and write love letters for them for free at the "Ghost Writer's Gate".After work, he went to Mr. Ghostwriter's doorway, slowly took off his coat, draped it on the back of the chair, put on the sleeves so as not to stain the sleeves of his shirt, and, for better thinking, unbuttoned his vest. untied.Sometimes he would write late into the night, bringing back the brokenhearted with his mesmerizing letters.Some days, he meets greedy women who have fallen out with their sons, veterans who insist on receiving pensions, people who have been stolen and want to complain to the government, and it is difficult to satisfy them because the only thing he can do is What moved others was the love letter he wrote.For new customers, he doesn't even need to ask questions, he just needs to look at their white eyes to understand their mental state.He wrote passionate letters one after another, the surefire way of writing them always with Fermina in mind and nothing but her.After the first month, he had to set up an appointment system so that he wouldn't be overwhelmed by impatient lovers. The fondest recollections of that period are of a shy girl, almost a little girl, tremblingly begging him to answer for her an irresistible letter he had just received.Ariza recognized it as a letter he had written the previous afternoon.According to the girl's passion and age, he wrote a letter in different ways, and her handwriting resembled hers, and he was able to imitate various handwriting according to the situation and according to the characteristics of the individual character.He imagined to his heart's content what kind of reply Fermina would write to him if his love for him was the same as that of the bewildered little girl for her suitor.Naturally, after two days, he was able to write another letter for the young man with the same style, tone and way of expressing love as he wrote the first letter.In this way, he exchanged passionate letters with himself. In less than a month, the two went to thank him separately, thanking him for the proposal that he single-handedly put forward in the boyfriend's letter and the girl enthusiastically accepted in the reply: get married. After they gave birth to their first son, in an accidental conversation, both parties found out that the same ghostwriter was responsible for their letters. For the first time, they arrived at the "gateway of ghostwriter" together and asked him to take care of the newborn. godfather.Ariza was thrilled that his dream had become a reality.He squeezed out time from his busy schedule to write a poem: "The Lover's Secretary".This poem is more poetic and has a wider content than another poem that was sold in the doorway for 20 cash at that time and was memorized by more than half of the city's citizens.He sorted out the scenes of Fermina and him meeting in his fantasy, each scene was based on various patterns he thought possible, and wrote letters and replies that blended the scenes.In the end, he wrote thousands of letters, divided into three volumes, each volume was as thick as the Covarrubias dictionary, but none of the publishers in the city would take the risk of publishing for him, so they had to put them away at home. Rancito flatly refused to create the jar out of the ground, lest he waste his life savings on the madness of publishing these letters.Years later, by the time Ariza himself had the money to publish the book, those love letters were already out of date, a reality he had to admit with difficulty. From the time Ariza took his first steps with the Caribbean Inland Shipping Company and ghostwritten letters at Mr. Ghostwriter's Doorway for free, the friends of his youth were convinced that he was alienating them and never looking back.Sure enough, when he had just returned from his trip up the river, in the hope of alleviating the memory of Fermina, he visited certain friends, played billiards with them, and participated in the final event of his life. He went to several balls, let the girls laugh at him indifferently, and did all kinds of things that he thought would help to restore him to his original self.Later, after Uncle Leon XII hired him as a staff member, he started playing dominoes with his colleagues in the Commercial Club.Finally, he and his colleagues only talked about the shipping company, and when they mentioned the shipping company, they did not mention the full name, but only used the abbreviation C? F? C. By this time, the colleagues regarded him as one of their own.He even changed the way he ate.Before that, he had been careless and irregular at the dinner table, but from then until his death he was the same every day, and he was very economical: breakfast was a large cup of pure coffee, lunch was a piece of stewed fish and meat. White rice, a cup of coffee with milk and a small piece of cheese before going to bed.He drank pure coffee at all times, no matter where he was, or on any occasion, thirty cups a day.It was a drink like crude oil, and he always preferred to brew it himself, pouring the coffee into a thermos bottle, which was within reach.Contrary to his own steadfast desires and ardent efforts, he was a different person than he was before the death blow from love. In fact, it was impossible for him to be where he was before.Getting Fermina back was his only goal in life, and he was convinced that sooner or later he would get her.He convinces Transito to keep working on the house so that she can be welcomed into the house whenever the miracle happens.In an entirely different reaction to the proposal to publish "The Lover's Secretary," Transito now took a big step forward: She bought the house for cash and set about completely renovating it.They renovated the original bedroom into a living room, and built another bedroom on the top floor for the couple and another room for possible children. Both rooms are spacious and well lit.On the vacant lot that used to be a cigarette factory, a wide garden was built with all kinds of roses, which Ariza planted by himself in his spare time in the early morning.The only thing that remains intact is the pawn shop, which is a testimony to not forgetting the past. The back room where Florentino Ariza had lived was the same as before, with the hammock hanging and the large writing desk cluttered with books, but he had moved into the room on the top floor that was supposed to be a couple's bedroom.This house is the most spacious and coolest in the family. It also has an inner balcony, where the sea breeze blows and the roses are fragrant. It is very comfortable to stay on the balcony at night, but it is also the most in line with Ariza's ascetic standard of austerity.The walls were bare and rough, plastered with quicklime.Apart from a convict's bed, a bedside table with a glass jar for a candle, an old wardrobe, a jug, a tub, and a washbasin, there was no other furniture. The project to renovate the house lasted nearly three years, coinciding with the city's recovery period.There was a surge in shipping and entrepot trade, two factors that created colonial prosperity and made it the gateway to the Americas for more than two centuries.However, this was also the period when Transito showed the early symptoms of an incurable disease.She was looking older, gaunter, and trance-like when her regular customers came to her pawn shop, with whom she had dealt half her life, and now she didn't recognize them, or put them away. Things are ostentatious.This is very serious for her kind of business, because the business she is engaged in has never signed any paperwork, and her reputation is only based on word of mouth, a word is a guarantee, and it is recognized as usual.At first, she thought she was deaf, but soon realized that it was obviously a memory problem that made her lose her mind.So she closed the pawn shop, and besides renovating and furnishing the house with the wealth in the jars in the ground, she was left with many of the most valuable ancient jewels in the city, whose owners were unable to redeem them. Ariza had to juggle many things at the same time, but it never weakened his drive to intensify his poaching of women.He made a dewy couple with Nazaret's widow for a while, and opened the way to find flowers and willows. Mina's pain.In the end, it was impossible to tell whether his habit of desperately venting his lust was a psychological necessity or a physical vice.His visits to the inn became less and less, not only because his interests had diverted, but also because he did not want to be recognized by his acquaintances.Three times, in a desperate situation, he adopted a simple method that he had never done before: dressed his girlfriend who was worried about being recognized as a man, and went to the hotel together as a jovial night owl.But at least twice, it was discovered that he and the so-called boyfriend went straight to the room instead of the bar after entering the hotel.This brought Ariza's rather disreputable reputation to an end.Later, he visited only a few times, but not to repeat the old tricks, but on the contrary, to find a refuge where he could breathe a sigh of relief from his excesses. Not going into the inn is not giving up on that kind of thing.Around five o'clock in the afternoon, as soon as he left the office, he hunted around like an eagle with a chick.At first, he was content with the gift of the night.He hooked up with the maids in the park, with the niggers at the market, with the courtesans on the beach, with the American women on the steamer from New Orleans, and took them to the reef, where, from sunset, half a People in the city are all about that kind of thing.Taking them to all the places where such a thing could be done, and sometimes even where it was not, many times he had to rush into the dark hall and talk casually behind the door. Do that. The lighthouse had always been a sanctuary of bliss, and in his twilight years, when all hope was lost, he still missed the lighthouse with attachment. It was a good place to have a good time, especially at night.He once thought that the sailors might have seen something of his romantic activities in that period during the question and answer at the signal light.He went on to the lighthouse more often than anywhere else, and was received with joy by his friend, the lighthouse keeper, with a silly face that relieved the frightened birds.There was a house under the lighthouse, close to the thundering waves crashing against the cliff, and in that house the love was stronger because there was a feeling of being in distress.After the night of the madness of love, Florentino Ariza preferred to go to the lighthouse because it overlooked the city and the sea and the thousands of fishing lanterns in the lake beyond. During this time, his shallow theory of the relationship between a woman's physical condition and her ability to fall in love was formed.He documented these half-baked observations to write a practical sequel to "The Lover's Secretary," and Auscensina Santander, with her old-dog wisdom, turned him upside down and made his brilliant argument thoroughly bankruptcy.As a result, this plan, like the one to publish "The Lover's Secretary," came to naught. Awu Senxi Niang had a normal married life for 20 years and had three sons, all of whom were married and had children.She billed herself as the luckiest grandmother in town.It was never clear whether she had abandoned her husband or the husband had abandoned her, or whether they had abandoned each other at the same time.The husband passed with his former lover, who was free to open her doors in broad daylight to receive La Rosa, the captain of the river steamer, as she had so many times in the past at night to receive him at the back.It was the captain himself who, without thinking twice, brought Florentino Ariza to her home. The captain took him to lunch, and the captain also brought a large bottle of home-brewed wine and the best ingredients for a cassava-banana broth, which can only be served with farm hens, tender beef with bones, and leftovers. Only the meat of pigs raised with rice and vegetables from the villages along the river can be made.From the beginning Ariza was indifferent to the good food and the graces of the hostess.Just can't say enough about that beautiful home.He liked the bright, cool house, with its four large windows facing the sea, and the whole old city behind it.He loved the splendor of the decorations which made the drawing-room bewildering and forbidding.There are all exquisite handicrafts, all brought back by Captain Rosendo de la Rosa when he sailed, and there is no room for them in the house.On the balcony facing the sea, perched on the fence, there was a Malaysian white parrot, incredibly white in plumage, immobile in a contemplative, incomprehensible way, the most beautiful animal Ariza had ever seen. Delighted by the high spirits of his guests, La Rosa explained in detail the origin of each item, sipping non-stop alcohol as he spoke.He was built like a piece of steel and concrete: a huge body, covered with hair except for his bald head, a goatee like a big brush, and a sound like a bell-only this man can have such a loud voice.He was very refined, but he was addicted to alcohol.Before eating, he had already drank half a bottle of wine, and fell down on the tray where the cups and bottles were placed, and the cups and bottles made a crisp cracking sound.Amacensina had to ask Florentino Ariza to help him drag his unconscious body, like a stranded whale, onto the bed, and undress the sleeping captain.Then, a thought flashed in their minds to thank the erratic arrangement, and then they tacitly went to a room next to them to make out.For more than seven years, when the captain was out sailing, they were together at every opportunity.There was no danger of being run over, for the captain, in the habit of a good seaman, would announce his arrival by the ship's whistle, even in the morning.Three flutes to inform his wife and nine children, and then two short, melancholy flutes to his mistress. Awu Senxiji is nearly half a century old, and she is not young, but her lust is still the same as before.According to the course of the ship, Ariza knew when it was possible to see her, and he always went without warning, day or night, when he wanted to, and not once did she not wait for him. One Sunday, two years after they had known each other, when he came to her house, the first thing she did was not to undress him, but to take off his glasses and kiss him.Ariza knew that she was beginning to fall in love with him.He's been very comfortable in that house since day one, he loves it and considers it his own, but he doesn't spend more than two hours in it at a time and never sleeps there After all, she only had dinner once, and that was when she sent him a formal invitation.In fact, he went only for her, always with his only gift—a solitary rose, and he didn't even show his face until the next unforeseen opportunity.On the Sunday when she took off his spectacles and kissed him, they spent a whole afternoon in the captain's huge bed.After waking up from her afternoon nap, Florentino Ariza still remembered hearing the white parrot's call, the piercing sound of a broken gong, which was incompatible with its beautiful appearance.At four o'clock in the hot afternoon, everything is quiet, and through the window of the bedroom, you can see the side of the ancient city. The afternoon sun shines on its back, on the golden spires of its buildings, and on the golden Straight to the sea in Jamaica.Aurinsina held out her bold hand, which Ariza pushed away.He said: "Not now! I have a strange feeling that someone is watching us." She made the parrot squeal again with her happy laughter.She said: "Even Zeus' wife would not believe such an excuse." Of course, she would not believe it either, but she agreed with him, and they made out in silence for a long time.At five o'clock, the sun was still high, she jumped up from the bed, naked, with the ribbon on her head, went to the kitchen to find something to drink, and screamed in panic before she even took a step outside the bedroom . Can't believe it.The only thing left in the house are the chandeliers.The rest, signed furniture, Indian rugs, sculptures and Gobelin tapestries, innumerable gems and knick-knacks of precious metal, everything that made her home one of the most beautiful and stately in the city The decorations, everything, up to the god-like white parrot, disappeared.Without disturbing them, they took their things from the balcony facing the sea.All that remains are a few empty houses, four open windows, and a sentence written with a thick brush on the wall next to the inside: Because of the fall, this kind of thing will fall on your head .Captain La Rosa has never been able to understand why Ausensina didn't report the crime, and she didn't try to contact the businessman who bought the stolen goods, and she didn't allow others to mention this unfortunate incident. Ariza went on to see her in the ransacked house, the only furniture remaining were the three leather chairs the robbers had forgotten in the kitchen and the bedroom they were in at the time.He didn't see her as often, however, not because of the ransacking of the house, as she guessed, but because of the novelty of the mule cart at the turn of the century.The mule cart was his ingenious hunting of solitary birds.He rides four times a day, goes to the office twice, and goes home twice. Sometimes he actually reads documents or newspapers in the car, but most of the time he uses reading as a pretense to establish preliminary contacts for future trysts.Later, his uncle Leon XII allocated him a cart pulled by two chestnut mules in golden horse coats like the mules of President Rafael Nunez. To the era when he was exposed to the Playboy affair.His thinking is not without reason: the greatest enemy of fenqing is the car waiting at the door.He kept his mules hidden at home almost all the time, and hunted women on foot so as not to leave ruts in the ground.Because of this, he misses those old-fashioned drivers very much.The stagecoach of the shaved mule.In the stagecoach, he had only to glance sideways to know where to find love.However, in countless fascinating memories, he couldn't forget a helpless bird, he didn't even know her name, and he only spent one happy midnight with her, but only so One scene, and it was enough to give him a headache for the rest of his life from the innocent chaos of the carnival. Her bravery in the midst of the reveling crowd caught his attention in the stagecoach.She doesn't look like she's in her twenties, and if she doesn't dress up as a disabled person, it's hard to see how much she's going to party.Her hair is very light, long, and flat, draped over her shoulders naturally, and she is wearing an ordinary long gown without any decoration.Facing the deafening music on the street, the handfuls of rice flour sprinkled into the air, the red and green water sprinkled on the riders as the stagecoaches passed by—the mules pulling the carts were all coated with starch during the three crazy days. All white, with a crown of flowers on her head - she was completely indifferent.利用那个混乱场面，阿里萨提出请她吃冰淇淋，他没想花更大的代价。她看了他一眼，并不感到意外。她说；“我很乐意接受，但是我要警告你，我是个疯子。”对她的回答，他付之一笑，随即带她到冰淇淋店的阳台上去看彩车队伍。过后，他穿上一件租来的带风帽的外衣，两人到海关广场接进了跳舞的人群，象初恋的情人似的翩翩起舞。在喧嚣的夜晚，她益发心醉神迷，跳得跟个舞蹈家似的。在跳舞的人群里，她显得富有创造性而无所顾忌，舞姿优美，令人心荡神驰。 “你缠着我，还不知道是干了件什么蠢事呢。”她在如火如荼地狂欢着的人群里大声喊叫着说，“我是个疯人院里的疯子。” 阿里萨觉得，那天晚上他又回到了遭受失恋痛苦之前的纯洁而欢乐的境地。不过他心里明白，这么轻易到手的幸福是不可能持续多长时间的，他在这方面教训多于经验。于是，在夜晚的高潮开始减退之前——高潮总是在分发过化装最佳奖后就开始减退——他对姑娘建议说，到灯塔上去看日出吧。她高兴地接受了建议，但又说等发完奖品再去。 阿里萨确信，耽误这一会儿，真是救了他一条命。Not bad at all.当姑娘刚向他示意去灯塔的时候，“圣母”疯人院的两个如狼似虎的看守和一个女看守就扑到了她的身上。自从她下午三点钟逃走之后，他们就到处找她，不仅仅是他们三个人，而且动员了政府当局的全部力量。她用从花匠手里夺过来的砍刀砍死了一个守卫，把另外两个砍成了重伤，因为她想出来参加狂欢节舞会。谁也没想到她竟会在大街上跳舞，都以为她藏到什么人家里去了，他们搜查了成千上万家，连地下蓄水池都搜过了。 带她走可不容易。她拿出藏在乳罩里的整枝剪刀自卫，六个大男人刚把拘束衣给她套上，拥挤在海关广场上的人群就兴高采烈地鼓掌和起哄，以为这血腥的逮捕也是狂欢节里层出不穷的闹剧之一。阿里萨当时心里象刀绞似的，从礼拜三圣诞节那天开始，他就提着一盒英国巧克力到圣母街转悠，想把巧克力递给她。他站在那里，看着那些从窗户里对着他辱骂或哀求的女囚，用巧克力盒子返她们，希望能侥幸看到她也从铁窗里面出现。但他始终没有再见到过她。数日之后，有一天当他从驿车上下来的时候，一个跟父亲一起走的小女孩向他要一块他提着的盒子里的巧克力。父亲训斥女儿，并向阿里萨道歉。他把整盒巧克力都给了那个小姑娘，心里想他这样做会把他从一切痛苦中拯救出来。随后，他在小女孩的爸爸的肩膀上轻轻拍了一下，让他不要介意。 “这是送给一个见鬼去了的情人的。”他对他说。 作为命运的补偿，阿里萨认识卡西亚妮也是在骡拉驿车上，她实际上是他一生中真正爱过的女人，虽然他和她都始终没有意识到，他们也一直没有过枕席之欢。 他坐下午五点的驿车回家，看到她之前他就感觉到了她的存在：她实实在在地看了他一眼，他觉得好象被手指戳了一下似的。他抬起头看见了她，她坐在对面最远的地方，在其余乘客中有如鹤立鸡群。她迎着他的目光，继续厚颜无耻地盯着他。他只能象在第一次想象时那么想象她：黑姑娘，年轻而漂亮，但毫无疑问，是个婊子。 他把她从生活中抹掉了，他觉得最不值得的就是拿钱买爱情，他从来没有买过。 阿里萨在停车广场下了驿车，那是驿车的终点站。他三步并做两步地穿过迷宫似的卖货摊朝前走，母亲在等他六点钟回去。穿出人群之后，他听见背后响起了一阵女人的鞋后跟落在石头地面上的欢快的啦啦声，他回头看了一眼，以便确认他已经猜到了的情况：是她。她的打扮和画中女奴一般，穿一条宽荷叶边裙子，两手以跳舞的姿势牵起裙角，迈过街上的水坑，敞口领开得连肩膀都露了出来，脖子上挂着一串花花绿绿的项链，头上裹着一条白头巾。他在小客栈里见识过她这样的人。 时常是这样，到了下午六点，她们肚子里还只装着早饭时，她们就不得不把自己的肉体当做拦路贼的刀来使，扯着嗓子对在街上碰到的第一个男人调情。要么做婊子，要么就饿肚子。为了进行一次最后的验证，阿里萨拐了个弯，走进空无一人的那条名叫麦仙翁的小巷子。她尾随着他，越跟越紧。这时，他停下脚步，转过身来双手拄着雨伞站在人行道上，挡住了她的去路。她在他面前站住了。 “你搞错了，美人儿。”他说，“我不会给你的。” “当然会啦，”她说，“从你脸上瞧得出来。” 阿里萨想起了他小时候听见那位他们家的家庭医生——也就是他的教父——在谈到他的慢性便秘时说过的一句话：“世界上的人分成两大类：会拉屎的和不会拉屎的。”根据这一论断，这位医生提出了一整套关于性格的理论，他认为这比星占学还要精确。然而随着阅历的增长，阿里萨以另一种方式提出了这个理论：“世界上的人分成两大类：会嫖的和不会嫖的。”他对后一种人采取了不信任的态度。对这些人来讲，越轨行为仿佛是不可思议的。他们把男女之间的那些事看得神乎其神，仿佛是他们刚刚发明的。相反，经常干这种事的人，活着就是为了这个。他们心安理得，守口如瓶，因为他们知道，谨慎关系着他们的生命。他们不谈论自己的豪举，不委托任何人牵线搭桥，装做对这事漠不关心到了极点，甚至落得个性无能，或者性冷，尤其是象阿里萨这样被人说成是假女人的名声，他们也无所谓。不过，这种阴差阳错正中他们的下怀，因为这种差错也保护着他们。这是个绝密的共济会，全世界的会员都互相认识，并不需要共同语言。正是这样，阿里萨对那个姑娘的回答才不感到意外：她和他是一丘之貉，因此她才知道他明白她的想法。 这是他一生最大的错误，他的良心每日每时都这么提醒他，直到他离开人间那一天。她想向他要求的，并非爱情，更不是卖钱的爱情，而是在加勒比内河航运公司找一份儿工作，随便干点什么，挣多少钱都可以。阿里萨对自己的行为很内疚，便把她带去见了人事处长，人事处长给她在总务处安排了一个最低下的工作，她认真、谦卑而兢兢业业地干了三年。 从创立时起，加勒比内河航运公司的办公室就在码头跟前，和在海湾对面的远洋船只港口以及鬼魂湾市场的锚地毫不搭界。那是一座木结构楼房，房顶是用锌皮做的人字顶，唯一的阳台很长，用支在楼正面的柱子撑着，楼房四面开着好几个钉着铁丝网的窗户，从窗户里可以象看挂在墙上的图表似的看到靠在码头上的全部船只。创建公司的德国人修这座楼的时候，把锌皮顶漆成了红色，把木头墙壁漆成了雪白色，整座楼也有点象一艘内河船只。后来，整个楼都漆成了蓝色，阿里萨到公司里工作的那一阵，楼宇变成了一个灰尘山积的大棚子，说不清到度是什么颜色了，锈迹斑斑的房顶，原先的锌板上用新锌板打了些补丁。楼房后面有个用粗铁丝围起来的铺着碎石子的院子，院子里有两座显得更新一些的大仓库，仓库后面是一条堵死了的河沟，又脏又臭，半个世纪航运积累的垃圾在河沟里腐烂：古老的旧船的废墟，其中有由西蒙?博利瓦尔剪彩下水的只有一个烟筒的原始船只，也有几条相当新的、舱房里已经装有电风扇的船。旧船大部分都已经拆过了，上面的材料用在了别的船上，但不少船只的状况还相当不错，似乎只要给它们涂上点漆就可以开去航行，用不着惊吓住在船里的派晰和除去覆盖在船上使它们显得更加可怜巴巴的巨大的黄色野花。 楼房的顶层是管理处，房间小而舒适，装备齐全，跟轮船的仓房似的，它是造船工程师修建的。餐厅的尽头里，叔叔莱昂十二跟普通职员一样，在一间和所有的办公室毫无区别的办公室里办公，唯一的区别是，在他的写字台上，每天早晨都有一束插在一个玻璃瓶里的随便什么样的香花。楼房的底层是旅客集中之处，里面有个候船室，候船室里摆着几条粗木凳，一个卖船票和办理行李托运的阳台。在所有办公室的后面，是那个莫名其妙的总务处，单是总务处这个名字，就给人以一个职资含糊的印象，公司其它部门没有解决的所有问题都送到总务处来不了了之。卡西亚妮就在那里，坐在一张放在堆码着的玉米袋子和没法处理的文件堆里的学生课桌后面。那天，叔叔莱昂十二亲自到那里去了，看看这个总务处到底能起点什么作用。 在那里当众和所有职员进行交谈。在三个小时的理论上的建议和具体调查之后，他忧心忡忡地回到了自己的办公室里，考虑了许久，确信没有找到堆积如山的案件的任何解决办法，而是完全相反，又发现了些无法解决的各种各样的新问题。 第二天，阿里萨走进自己的办公室的时候，看到了卡西亚妮留的一张条子，要求研究一下，如果认为合适的话，看完以后呈送他的叔叔。她是头天下午在视察时唯一未说话的人。她有意识地注意到了自己的照顾性雇员的身分，但在那张条子上她说明了，她一言不发并不是对事情漠不关心，而是为了尊重处里有身分的职员。 条子写得如此言简意赅。叔叔莱昂十二设想进行一次深刻改组，但卡西亚妮的想法恰恰相反，理由很简单，所谓总务处实际上不存在：它是装那些其它处推卸下来的令人头疼然而又无足轻重的问题的垃圾桶。因此解决办法就是，撤销总务处，把问题通到原先把它推出来的各处室去解决。 叔叔莱昂十二对卡西亚妮是何许人毫无印象，也不记得在头天下午的会议上看见过她，但他看了条子之后，就把她叫到办公室，关起门来同她谈了两个小时。按照他厂解人的方式，他们的谈话各方面都有所涉及。条子是平平常常的，但是有助于问题的解决，产生了渴望已久的效果。不过，叔叔莱昂十二对此不感兴趣，他感兴趣的是她本人。最引起他注意的是，小学毕业之后，她只在制帽学校上过学。另外，她正在家里采用一种速成方法无师自通地学习英语，三个月前，她开始上夜校学习打字。打字是个大有前途的新职业，就象过去说电报员大有前途，或再平时候说蒸汽机大有前途是一样的。 她谈完话出去的时候，叔叔莱昂十?二已经开始象他后来一直称呼她的那样，管她叫同名人莱昂娜了。根据莱昂娜?卡西亚妮的建议，他当机立断地决定撤销总务处，把问题分别退回原来制造这些问题的人那里去解决，并为她设置了一个既没有名称也没有具体职能的职位，实际上就是他的私人助理。这天下午，果断地撤销了总务处之后，叔叔莱昂十二问阿里萨，是从哪儿把卡西亚妮搞来的，阿里萨如实作了回答。 “那么请你到驿车去一下，把象她一样的姑娘统统给我带来。”叔叔对他说，“有两个或三个这样的姑娘，我们就能把你那只大帆船打捞起来了。” 阿里萨把这句话当成了叔叔莱昂十二独特的玩笑，但第二天他就发现，六个月以前拨给他的那辆车子不见了，取消他的车子是为了让他继续在驿车上寻找隐藏着的人才。卡西亚妮呢，原先的小心谨慎很快就一扫而光，头三年里将颇为狡猾地隐在内心深处的浑身解数都使厂出来。又过了三年，她把一切情况都掌握了，在往后的四年间，她已经快提升到秘书长了，但她拒绝担任秘书长，因为她只比阿里萨低一级。到那时为止，她依然听命于他，她愿意继续这样。但实际上并非如此，阿里萨本人也没有察觉，是他在听从她的命令。事情是这样的，他只不过是在总经理室里执行她提出的建议，以便帮助他战胜自己那些不露首尾的敌人的阴谋诡计。