Memories of My Melancholy Whores

《神女回忆录》— （南美）马尔克斯著 黄思明译

翻译底本:美国Edith Grossman版本

I have never gone to bed with a woman I didn't pay, and the few who weren't in the profession I persuaded, by argument or by force, to take money even if they threw it in the trash. When I was twenty I began keep a record listing name, age, place,and a brief notation on the circumstances and style of lovemaking.

(此段省略，不解释)

By the time I was fifty there were 514 women with whom I had been at least once. I stopped making the list when my body no longer allowed me to have so many and I could keep track of them without paper. I had my own ethics. I never took part in orgies or in public encounters, and I did not share secrets or recount an adventure of the body or the soul, because from the time I was young I realized that none goes unpunished.

……而且，我亦无需写于纸上，即可继续追踪。我有自己的原则，我从不参与狂欢派对和公开聚会。且也不会分享秘密，或抒发身体与灵魂的冒险故事。因我年轻时就懂，任何事都会被清算。(仅仅翻译后面部分)

The only unusual relationship was the one I maintained for years with the faithful Damiana. She was almost a girl, Indianlike, strong, rustic, her words few and brusque, who went barefoot so as to disturb me while I was writing. I remember I was reading La lozana andaluza——The Haughty Andalusian Girl——in the hammock in the hallway, when I happened to see her bending over in the laundry room wearing a skirt so short it bared her succulent curves.

唯一同我保持多年关系的是一位叫大米阿娜女孩。她几乎像印度安人，强壮又质朴。她话少，怕冒犯我。当我写作时，她总赤脚引我。记得一次，我正躺走廊吊床上，读一本叫《拉洛萨纳和阿卢萨——傲慢的安达卢西亚女孩》的书。当我看到她着短裙，正在洗衣房弯腰时，身体曲线，一览无余。

Overcome by irresistible excitement, I pulled her skirt up in back, pulled her underwear down to her knees, and charged her from behind. Oh, Senor, she said, with a mournful lament, that wasn't made for coming in but for going out.

(此段省略，不解释，请读者自己琢磨)

A profound tremor shook her body but she stood firm. Humiliated at having humiliated her, I wanted to pay her twice what the most expensive women cost at the time, but she would not take a cent, and I had to raise her salary calculated on the basis of one mounting a month, always while she was doing the laundry, and always from the back.

此段省略，不解释。

At one time, I thought these bed-inspired accounts would serve as a good foundation for a narration of the miseries of my misguided life, and the title came to me out of the blue: Memories of my Melancholy Whores.

有一次，我想这些床头备受鼓舞的老主顾们，可以写成很好的悲情故事，用来指导我的生活。于是，一个忧郁的题目飘荡脑海：Memories of my Melancholy Whores，也就是《神女回忆录》。

My public life, on the other hand, was lacking in interest: both parents dead, a bachelor without a future, a mediocre journalist who had been a finalist four times in the Poetic Competition, the Juegos Florales, of Cartagena de Indias, and a favorite of caricaturists because of my exemplify ugliness❶.

另一面，我的公开生活很无趣。我父母双亡，是个无望的光棍佬，也是普通记者。我曾四次闯入诗歌比赛中的决赛阶段。就是在印第安纳卡塔赫纳的《花卉游戏》，参加比赛。而且，一个我最爱的讽刺画家，见证了我丑陋主义的典范。

In short, a wasted life off to a bad start beginning on the afternoon my mother led me by the hand when I was nineteen years old to see if El Diario de La Paz would publish a chronicle of school life that I had written in my Spanish and rhetoric class. It was published on Sunday with an encouraging introduction by the editor.

简而言之，就在那天下午，我开始了虚度光阴，老妈手把手引导只有19岁的我，看是否能在外《和平日记》上，发表一本学校生活编年史。在西班牙文和修辞课上，我写下这样一本书。最后，它发表在《周日评论》上，那是最初被主编鼓励的写作经历。

Years later, when I learned that my mother had paid for its publication and for the seven that followed, it was too late for me to be embarrassed, because my weekly column was flying on its own wings and I was cable editor and music critic as well.

多年后，当我得知老妈为了那次出版的事，不仅花了钱，更是亲自跑了七趟之多。我都来不及羞愧，因为作为《星期专栏》主编，已经实现理想的“翅膀”——成功创刊。我不仅是有线电视主编，还是音乐评论家。

After I obtained my bachillerato with a diploma ranked excellent, I began teaching classes in Spanish and Latin at three different public secondary schools at the same time.

获得优秀高中文凭后，我开始在三所不同的中学，带班教西班牙文和拉丁文。

I was a poor teacher, with no training, no vocation, and no pity at all for those poor children who attended school as the easiest way to escape the tyranny of their parents.

作为老师，我误人子弟。我没有训练和使命，也从不可怜那些穷学生，他们逃脱父母控制和暴力。

The only thing I could do for them was to keep them subject to the terror of my wooden ruler so that at least they would take away with them my favorite poem:

对这些学生，我唯一做的事就是，让他们匍匐在我的戒尺恐惧下，就为了让他们带走我最爱的诗歌：

O Fabio,O sorrow, what you see now,these fields of desolation, gloomy hills, were once the famous fair Italica,

《哦，法比奥》，《哦！惋惜》，《汝之所见》，《这些遗弃荒野》，《暗黑高冈》，《曾经辉煌公正的意大利》……

Only as an old man did I happen to learn the nasty name the students called me behimd my back:Professor Gloomy Hills❷.

This was all that life gave me, and I have never done anything to abtain more. I ate lunch alone between classes, and at six in the evening I would go to the editorial offices of the paper to hunt for signals from sidereal space.

At eleven, when the edition closed, my real life began. I slept in the red-light district, the Barrio Chino, two or three times a week, and with such a variety of companions that I was twice crowned client of the year.After supper at the nearby Cafe Roma I would choose a brothel at random and slip in through the back door.

I did this because it amused me to, but in the end it because part of my work thanks to the careless speech of political bigwigs who would tell state secrets to their lovers for the night, never thinking they were overheard by public opinion through the cardboard partitions.

By this means, of course, I also learned that they attributed my inconsolable bachelorhood to a nocturnal pederasty satisfied by orphan boys on the Calle del Crimen. I had the good fortune to forget this, among other sound reasons because I also heard the positive things said about me, which I appreciated for their true value.

I never had intimate friends, and the few who came close are in New York. By which I mean they're dead, because that's where I suppose condemned souls go in order not to endure the truth of their past lives. Since my retirement I have had little to do except take my pieces to the paper on Friday afternoons or fulfill other obligations that have a certain significance:

concerts at Bellas Artes, painting exhibitions at the Centro Artistico, of which I am a founding member, an occasional civil conference at the Society for Public Improvement, or an important event like Fabregas's engagement at the Teatro Apolo.

As a young man I would go to the open-air movie theaters, where we could be surprised by a lunar eclipse or by a case of double pneumonia from a downpour gone astray. But what intrested me more than films were the little birds of the night who would go to bed with you for the price of a ticket, or at no cost, or on credit. Movies are not my genre. The obscene cult of Shirley Temple was the final straw.

译者注：

❶the Juegos Florales, of Cartagena de Indias, and a favorite of caricaturists because of my exemplify ugliness，这里仍然有好多西班牙语词汇，Juegos Florales和Cartagena de Indias都来源于西班牙语，前者是“花卉游戏”，后者表示的名字，Cartagena是哥伦比亚的一个城市，a port city in northwestern Colombia on the Caribbean，Indias本身是印度，但是当年大航海时代，哥伦布来到美洲时也不知道到了哪里，以为到了亚洲的印度，于是美洲也是被命名为“印度”，后来为了区分把美洲的Indias翻译为“印第安纳”，所以这里翻译为印第安纳的卡塔赫纳。

❷