Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo
这场雨像是癔症或者发高烧的人所感受到的。那种昏天黑地的雨，渐渐剥夺了人的视觉和嗅觉，等最后雨晴时所能感受到的只是一种嗡嗡的宁静，如同死亡前的赐福。而在这场雨中 Isabel 和其他人的感知应该是不太一样的。她听到了别人对她说的话，但她找不到说话的人。她在雨中坐着，最后却发现原来自己正躺着。她以为到了周五，但实际上还是在周四。最后一声火车的汽笛穿过重重雨幕而来，她的梦游感似乎正在散去，可是事情似乎仍未结束，就像结尾所写的一样。这整片文章让我感觉是在暗示 invasion 对殖民地人的戕害，包括对人们的记忆和五感的戕害，在这种历史中没有人能真正找到自己的位置，那些对抗入侵的人，就像那头牛一样，在惯性地对抗中缓缓死去，而还有许多人，似乎对这未曾察觉。Isabel 作为主人公所察觉到的，是一种理性不能理解的失衡感。这和《百年孤独》给我的感觉非常像。马尔克斯把许多难以言说的思考和情绪通过反常的自然表现表达了出来。其实很多时候我们翻看屈辱的近代史，除了愤怒以外很难感受到别的。但是马尔克斯的作品让我感受到了历史的悲伤和无奈。事情就是这样发生了，没有人知道为什么。就像没有人知道为什么雨下了这么久，没有人知道人们在雨里遗忘了什么，没有人知道那些在如瀑般的雨水里漂浮的尸体究竟是真的还是假的，我们被迫闭上眼睛，遮住耳朵，捂住鼻子，‘ And suddenly I felt my heart turned into a frozen stone. I’m dead, I thought. My God, I’m dead’.
And that was what they did, while the rain grew like an immense tree over the other trees.
We no longer felt it falling. We no longer saw anything except the outline of the trees in the mist, with a sad and desolate sunset which left on your lips the same taste with which you awaken after having dreamed about a stranger
We were paralyzed, drugged by the rain, given over to the collapse of nature with a peaceful and resigned attitude. Only the cow was moving in the afternoon. Suddenly a deep noise shook her insides and her hooves sank into the mud with greater force. Then she stood motionless for half an hour, as if she were already dead but could not fall down because the habit of being alive prevented her, the habit of remaining in one position in the rain, until the habit grew weaker than her body. Then she doubled her front legs (her dark and shiny haunches still raised in a last agonized effort) and sank her drooling snout into the mud, finally surrendering to the weight of her own matter in a silent, gradual, and dignified ceremony of total downfall.
At dawn on Thursday the smells stopped, the sense of distance was lost. The notion of time, upset since the day before, disappeared completely. Then there was no Thursday. What should have been Thursday was a physical, jellylike thing that could have been parted with the hands in order to look into Friday. There were no men or women there. My stepmother, my father, the Indians were adipose and improbably bodies that moved in the marsh of winter. My father said to me: “Don’t move away from here until you’re told what to do,” and his voice was distant and indirect and didn’t seem to be perceived by the ear but by touch, which was the only sense that remained alive.
Only then did I realize that it had cleared and that all around us a silence stretched out, a tranquility, a mysterious and deep beatitude, a perfect state which must have been very much like death. Then footsteps could be heard on the veranda. A clear and completely living voice was heard. Then a cool breeze shook the panel of the door, made the doorknob squeak, and a solid and monumental body, like a ripe fruit, fell deeply into the cistern in the courtyard. Something in the air revealed the presence of an invisible person who was smiling in the darkness. Good Lord, I thought then, confused by the mixup in time. It wouldn’t surprise me now if they were coming to call me to go to last Sunday’s mass.