AT THE AGE of twenty-eight, Dr. Juvenal Urbino had been the most desirable of bachelors. Hehad returned from a long stay in Paris, where he had completed advanced studies in medicine andsurgery, and from the time he set foot on solid ground he gave overwhelming indications that hehad not wasted a minute of his time. He returned more fastidious than when he left, more incontrol of his nature, and none of his contemporaries seemed as rigorous and as learned as he inhis science, and none could dance better to the music of the day or improvise as well on the piano.
1
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
Seduced by his personal charms and by the certainty of his family fortune, the girls in his circleheld secret lotteries to determine who would spend time with him, and he gambled, too, on beingwith them, but he managed to keep himself in a state of grace, intact and tempting , until hesuccumbed without resistance to the plebeian charms of Fermina Daza.
2
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
He liked to say that this love was the result of a clinical error. He himself could not believethat it had happened, least of all at that time in his life when all his reserves of passion wereconcentrated on the destiny of his city which, he said with great frequency and no secondthoughts, had no equal in the world. In Paris, strolling arm in arm with a casual sweetheart througha late autumn, it seemed impossible to imagine a purer happiness than those golden afternoons,with the woody odour of chestnuts on the braziers, the languid accordions , the insatiable loverskissing on the open terraces, and still he had told himself with his hand on his heart that he wasnot prepared to exchange all that for a single instant of his Caribbean in April. He was still tooyoung to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanksto this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past. But when he stood at the railing of theship and saw the white promontory of the colonial district again, the motionless buzzards on theroofs, the washing of the poor hung out to dry on the balconies, only then did he understand towhat extent he had been an easy victim to the charitable deceptions of nostalgia .
3
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
The ship made its way across the bay through a floating blanket of drowned animals, andmost of the passengers took refuge in their cabins to escape the stench. The young doctor walkeddown the gangplank dressed in perfect alpaca, wearing a vest and dustcoat, with the beard of ayoung Pasteur and his hair divided by a neat, pale part, and with enough self-control to hide thelump in his throat caused not by terror but by sadness. On the nearly deserted dock guarded bybarefoot soldiers without uniforms, his sisters and mother were waiting for him, along with hisclosest friends, whom he found insipid and without expectations despite their sophisticated airs;they spoke about the crisis of the civil war as if it were remote and foreign, but they all had anevasive tremor in their voices and an uncertainty in their eyes that belied their words. His mothermoved him most of all. She was still young, a woman who had made a mark on life with herelegance and social drive, but who was now slowly withering in the aroma of camphor that rosefrom her widow's crepe. She must have seen herself in her son's confusion, and she asked inimmediate self-defence why his skin was as pale as wax.
4
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
"It's life over there, Mother," he said. "You turn green in Paris."A short while later, suffocating with the heat as he sat next to her in the closed carriage, hecould no longer endure the unmerciful reality that came pouring in through the window. The oceanlooked like ashes, the old palaces of the marquises were about to succumb to a proliferation ofbeggars, and it was impossible to discern the ardent scent
5
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
of jasmine behind the vapours of deathfrom the open sewers . Everything seemed smaller to him than when he left, poorer and sadder, andthere were so many hungry rats in the rubbish heaps of the streets that the carriage horsesstumbled in fright. On the long trip from the port to his house, located in the heart of the Districtof the Viceroys, he found nothing that seemed worthy of his nostalgia. Defeated, he turned hishead away so that his mother would not see, and he began to cry in silence.
6
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
The former palace of the Marquis de Casalduero, historic residence of the Urbino de la Callefamily, had not escaped the surrounding wreckage . Dr. Juvenal Urbino discovered this with abroken heart when he entered the house through the gloomy portico and saw the dusty fountain inthe interior garden and the wild brambles in flower beds where iguanas wandered, and he realisedthat many marble flagstones were missing and others were broken on the huge stairway with itscopper railings that led to the principal rooms. His father, a physician who was more self-sacrificing than eminent , had died in the epidemic of Asian cholera that had devastated thepopulation six years earlier, and with him had died the spirit of the house. Do帽 a Blanca, hismother, smothered by mourning that was considered eternal, had substituted evening novenas forher dead husband's celebrated lyrical soir閑 s and chamber concerts. His two sisters, despite theirnatural inclinations and festivevocation
7
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
, were fodder for the convent.
8
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
Dr. Juvenal Urbino did not sleep at all on the night of his return; he was frightened by thedarkness and the silence, and he said three rosaries to the Holy Spirit and all the prayers he couldremember to ward off calamities and shipwrecks and all manner of night terrors, while a curlewthat had come in through a half-closed door sang every hour on the hour in his bedroom. He wastormented by the hallucinating screams of the madwomen in the Divine Shepherdess Asylum nextdoor, the harsh dripping from the water jar into the washbasin which resonated throughout thehouse, the long-legged steps of the curlew wandering in his bedroom, his congenital fear of thedark, and the invisible presence of his dead father in the vast, sleeping mansion . When the curlewsang five o'clock along with the local roosters, Dr. Juvenal Urbino commended himself body andsoul to Divine Providence because he did not have the heart to live another day in his rubble-strewn homeland. But in time the affection of his family, the Sundays in the country, and thecovetous attentions of the unmarried women of his class mitigated the bitterness of his firstimpression. Little by little he grew accustomed to the sultry heat of October, to the excessiveodours, to the hasty judgments of his friends, to the We'll see tomorrow, Doctor, don't worry, andat last he gave in to the spell of habit. It did not take him long to invent an easy justification for hissurrender. This was his world, he said to himself, the sad, oppressive world that God had providedfor him, and he was responsible to it.
9
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
The first thing he did was to take possession of his father's office. He kept in place the hard,sombre English furniture made of wood that sighed in the icy cold of dawn, but he consigned tothe attic the treatises on viceregal science and romantic medicine and filled the bookshelvesbehind their glass doors with the writings of the new French school. He took down the fadedpictures, except for the one of the physician arguing with Death for the nude body of a femalepatient, and the Hippocratic Oath printed in Gothic letters, and he hung in their place, next to hisfather's only diploma, the many diverse ones he himself had received with highest honours fromvarious schools in Europe.
10
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
He tried to impose the latest ideas at Misericordia Hospital, but this was not as easy as it hadseemed in his youthful enthusiasm, for the antiquated house of health was stubborn in itsattachment to atavistic superstitions , such as standing beds in pots of water to prevent disease fromclimbing up the legs, or requiring evening wear and chamois gloves in the operating room becauseit was taken for granted that elegance was an essential condition for asepsis. They could nottolerate the young newcomer's tasting a patient's urine to determine the presence of sugar, quotingCharcot and Trousseau as if they were his roommates, issuing severe warnings in class against themortal risks of vaccines while maintaining a suspicious faith in the recent invention ofsuppositories. He was in conflict with everything: his renovating spirit, his maniacal sense of civicduty, his slow humour in a land of immortal pranksters--everything, in fact, that constituted hismost estimable virtues provoked the resentment of his older colleagues and the sly jokes of theyounger ones.
11
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
His obsession was the dangerous lack of sanitation in the city. He appealed to the highestauthorities to fill in the Spanish sewers that were an immense breeding ground for rats, and tobuild in their place a closed sewage system whose contents would not empty into the cove at themarket, as had always been the case, but into some distant drainage area instead. The well-equipped colonial houses had latrines with septic tanks, but two thirds of the population lived inshanties at the edge of the swamps and relieved themselves in the open air. The excrement dried inthe sun, turned to dust, and was inhaled by everyone along with the joys of Christmas in the cool,gentle breezes of December. Dr. Juvenal Urbino attempted to force the City Council to impose anobligatory training course so that the poor could learn how to build their own latrines. He foughtin vain to stop them from tossing garbage into the mangrove thickets that over the centuries hadbecome swamps of putrefaction , and to have them collect it instead at least twice a week andincinerate it in some uninhabited area.
12
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
He was aware of the mortal threat of the drinking water. The mere idea of building anaqueduct seemed fantastic, since those who might have supported it had underground cisterns attheir disposal, where water rained down over the years was collected under a thick layer of scum.
13
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
Among the most valued household articles of the time were carved wooden water collectorswhose stone filters dripped day and night into large earthen water jars. To prevent anyone fromdrinking from the aluminium cup used to dip out the water, its edges were as jagged as the crownof a mock king. The water was crystalline and cool in the dark clay, and it tasted of the forest. ButDr. Juvenal Urbino was not taken in by these appearances of purity, for he knew that despite allprecautions, the bottom of each earthen jar was a sanctuary for waterworms. He had spent theslow hours of his childhood watching them with an almost mysticalastonishment , convincedalong with so many other people at the time that waterworms were animes, supernatural creatureswho, from the sediment in still water, courted young maidens and could inflict furious vengeancebecause of love. As a boy he had seen the havoc they had wreaked in the house of L醶ara Conde,a schoolteacher who dared to rebuff the animes, and he had seen the watery trail of glass in thestreet and the mountain of stones they had thrown at her windows for three days and three nights.
14
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
And so it was a long while before he learned that waterworms were in reality the larvae ofmosquitoes, but once he learned it he never forgot it, because from that moment on he realised thatthey and many other evil animes could pass through our simple stone filters intact.
15
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
For a long time the water in the cisterns had been honoured as the cause of the scrotal herniathat so many men in the city endured not only without embarrassment but with a certain patrioticinsolence. When Juvenal Urbino was in elementary school, he could not avoid a spasm of horrorat the sight of men with ruptures sitting in their doorways on hot afternoons, fanning theirenormous testicle as if it were a child sleeping between their legs. It was said that the herniawhistled like a lugubrious bird on stormy nights and twisted in unbearable pain when a buzzardfeather was burned nearby, but no one complained about those discomforts because a large, well-carried rupture was, more than anything else, a display of masculine honour. When Dr. JuvenalUrbino returned from Europe he was already well aware of the scientific fallacy in these beliefs,but they were so rooted in local superstition that many people opposed the mineral enrichment ofthe water in the cisterns for fear of destroying its ability to cause an honourable rupture.
16
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
Impure water was not all that alarmed Dr. Juvenal Urbino. He was just as concerned with thelack of hygiene at the public market, a vast extension of cleared land along Las羘imas Bay wherethe sailing ships from the Antilles would dock. An illustrious traveller of the period described themarket as one of the most varied in the world. It was rich, in fact, and profuse and noisy, but also,perhaps, the most alarming of markets. Set on its own garbage heap, at the mercy of capricioustides, it was the spot where the bay belched filth
17
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
from the sewers back onto land. The offal fromthe adjoining slaughterhouse was also thrown away there--severed heads, rotting viscera, animalrefuse that floated, in sunshine and starshine, in a swamp of blood. The buzzards fought for it withthe rats and the dogs in a perpetual scramble among the deer and succulent capons from Sotaventohanging from the eaves of the market stalls, and the spring vegetables from Arjona displayed onstraw mats spread over the ground. Dr. Urbino wanted to make the place sanitary , he wanted aslaughterhouse built somewhere else and a covered market constructed with stained-glass turrets,like the one he had seen in the old boquer韆 s in Barcelona, where the provisions looked sosplendid and clean that it seemed a shame to eat them. But even the most complaisant of hisnotable friends pitied his illusory passion. That is how they were: they spent their livesproclaiming their proud origins, the historic merits of the city, the value of its relics , its heroism,its beauty, but they were blind to the decay of the years. Dr. Juvenal Urbino, on the other hand,loved it enough to see it with the eyes of truth.
18
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
"How noble this city must be," he would say, "for we have spent four hundred years trying tofinish it off and we still have not succeeded,"They almost had, however. The epidemic of cholera morbus, whose first victims were struckdown in the standing water of the market, had, in eleven weeks, been responsible for the greatestdeath toll in our history. Until that time the eminent dead were interred under the flagstones in thechurches, in the exclusive vicinity of archbishops and capitulars, while the less wealthy wereburied in the patios of convents. The poor were sent to the colonial cemetery , located on a windyhill that was separated from the city by a dry canal whose mortar bridge bore the legend carvedthere by order of some clairvoyant mayor: Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate. After the first twoweeks of the cholera epidemic, the cemetery was overflowing
19
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
and there was no room left in thechurches despite the fact that they had dispatched the decayed remains of many nameless civicheroes to the communalossuary. The air in the Cathedral grew thin with the vapours from badlysealed crypts, and its doors did not open again until three years later, at the time that Fermina Dazasaw Florentino Ariza at close quarters as she left Midnight Mass. By the third week the cloister ofthe Convent of St. Clare was full all the way to its poplar-lined walks, and it was necessary to usethe Community's orchard , which was twice as large, as a cemetery. There graves were dug deepenough to bury the dead on three levels, without delay and without coffins , but this had to bestopped because the brimming ground turned into a sponge that oozed
20
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
sickening, infected blood atevery step. Then arrangements were made to continue burying in The Hand of God, a cattle ranchless than a league from the city, which was later consecrated as the Universal Cemetery.
21
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
From the time the cholera proclamation was issued, the local garrison shot a cannon from thefortress every quarter hour, day and night, in accordance with the local superstition thatgunpowder purified the atmosphere. The cholera was much more devastating to the blackpopulation, which was larger and poorer, but in reality it had no regard for colour or background.
22
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
It ended as suddenly as it had begun, and the extent of its ravages was never known, not becausethis was impossible to establish but because one of our most widespread virtues was a certainreticence concerning personal misfortune.
23
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
Dr. Marco Aurelio Urbino, the father of Juvenal, was a civic hero during that dreadful time,as well as its most distinguished victim. By official decree he personally designed and directedpublic health measures, but on his own initiative he intervened to such an extent in every socialquestion that during the most critical moments of the plague no higher authority seemed to exist.
24
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
Years later, reviewing the chronicle of those days, Dr. Juvenal Urbino confirmed that his father'smethodology had been more charitable than scientific and, in many ways, contrary to reason, sothat in large measure it had fostered the voraciousness of the plague. He confirmed this with thecompassion of sons whom life has turned, little by little, into the fathers of their fathers, and forthe first time he regretted not having stood with his father in the solitude of his errors. But he didnot dispute his merits: his diligence and his self-sacrifice and above all his personal couragedeserved the many honours rendered him when the city recovered from the disaster, and it waswith justice that his name was found among those of so many other heroes of less honourablewars.
25
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
He did not live to see his own glory. When he recognised in himself the irreversiblesymptoms that he had seen and pitied in others, he did not even attempt a useless struggle butwithdrew from the world so as not to infect anyone else. Locked in a utility room at MisericordiaHospital, deaf to the calls of his colleagues and the pleas of his family, removed from the horror ofthe plague victims dying on the floor in the packed corridors, he wrote a letter of feverish love tohis wife and children, a letter of gratitude for his existence in which he revealed how much andwith how much fervour he had loved life. It was a farewell of twenty heartrending pages in whichthe progress of the disease could be observed in the deteriorating script, and it was not necessaryto know the writer to realise that he had signed his name with his last breath. In accordance withhis instructions, his ashen body was mingled with others in the communal cemetery and was notseen by anyone who loved him.
26
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
Three days later, in Paris, Dr. Juvenal Urbino received a telegram during supper with friends,and he toasted the memory of his father with champagne
27
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
. He said: "He was a good man." Later hewould reproach himself for his lack of maturity : he had avoided reality in order not to cry. Butthree weeks later he received a copy of the posthumous letter, and then he surrendered to the truth.
28
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
All at once the image of the man he had known before he knew any other was revealed to him inall its profundity , the man who had raised him and taught him and had slept and fornicated withhis mother for thirty-two years and yet who, before that letter, had never revealed himself bodyand soul because of timidity, pure and simple. Until then Dr. Juvenal Urbino and his family hadconceived of death as a misfortune that befell others, other people's fathers and mothers, otherpeople's brothers and sisters and husbands and wives, but not theirs. They were people whose liveswere slow, who did not see themselves growing old, or falling sick, or dying, but who disappearedlittle by little in their own time, turning into memories, mists from other days, until they wereabsorbed into oblivion. His father's posthumous letter, more than the telegram with the bad news,hurled him headlong against the certainty of death. And yet one of his oldest memories, when hewas nine years old perhaps, perhaps when he was eleven, was in a way an early sign of death inthe person of his father. One rainy afternoon the two of them were in the office his father kept inthe house; he was drawing larks and sunflowers with coloured chalk on the tiled floor, and hisfather was reading by the light shining through the window, his vest unbuttoned and elasticarmbands on his shirt sleeves. Suddenly he stopped reading to scratch his back with a long-handled back scratcher that had a little silver hand on the end. Since he could not reach the spotthat itched , he asked his son to scratch him with his nails, and as the boy did so he had the strangesensation of not feeling his own body. At last his father looked at him over his shoulder with a sadsmile.
29
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
"If I died now," he said, "you would hardly remember me when you are my age."He said it for no apparent reason, and the angel of death hovered for a moment in the coolshadows of the office and flew out again through the window, leaving a trail of feathers flutteringin his wake, but the boy did not see them. More than twenty years had gone by since then, andJuvenal Urbino would very soon be as old as his father was that afternoon. He knew he wasidentical to him, and to that awareness had now been added the awful consciousness that he wasalso as mortal.
30
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
Cholera became an obsession for him. He did not know much more about it than he hadlearned in a routine manner in some marginal course, when he had found it difficult to believe thatonly thirty years before, it had been responsible for more than one hundred forty thousand deathsin France, including Paris. But after the death of his father he learned all there was to know aboutthe different forms of cholera, almost as a penance to appease his memory, and he studied with themost outstanding epidemiologist of his time and the creator of the cordons sanitaires, ProfessorAdrien Proust, father of the great novelist. So that when he returned to his country and smelled thestench of the market while he was still out at sea and saw the rats in the sewers and the childrenrolling naked in the puddles on the streets, he not only understood how the tragedy had occurredbut was certain that it would be repeated at any moment.
31
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
The moment was not long in coming. In less than a year his students at Misericordia Hospitalasked for his help in treating a charity patient with a strange blue coloration all over his body. Dr.
32
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
Juvenal Urbino had only to see him from the doorway to recognise the enemy. But they were inluck: the patient had arrived three days earlier on a schooner from Cura莽ao and had come to thehospital clinic by himself, and it did not seem probable that he had infected anyone else. In anyevent, Dr. Juvenal Urbino alerted his colleagues and had the authorities warn the neighbouringports so that they could locate and quarantine the contaminated schooner, and he had to restrainthe military commander of the city who wanted to declare martial law and initiate the therapeuticstrategy of firing the cannon every quarter hour.
33
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
"Save that powder for when the Liberals come," he said with good humour. "We are nolonger in the Middle Ages."The patient died in four days, choked by a grainy white vomit , but in the following weeks noother case was discovered despite constant vigilance. A short while later, The Commercial Dailypublished the news that two children had died of cholera in different locations in the city. It waslearned that one of them had had common dysentery, but the other, a girl of five, appeared to havebeen, in fact, a victim of cholera. Her parents and three brothers were separated and placed underindividual quarantine, and the entire neighbourhood was subjected to strict medical supervision
34
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
One of the children contracted cholera but recovered very soon, and the entire family returnedhome when the danger was over. Eleven more cases were reported in the next three months, and inthe fifth there was an alarming outbreak, but by the end of the year it was believed that the dangerof an epidemic had been averted
35
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
. No one doubted that the sanitary rigour of Dr. Juvenal Urbino,more than the efficacy of his pronouncements, had made the miracle possible. From that time on,and well into this century, cholera was endemic not only in the city but along most of theCaribbean coast and the valley of the Magdalena, but it never again flared into an epidemic. Thecrisis meant that Dr. Juvenal Urbino's warnings were heard with greater seriousness by publicofficials. They established an obligatory Chair of Cholera and Yellow Fever in the MedicalSchool, and realised the urgency of closing up the sewers and building a market far from thegarbage dump. By that time, however, Dr. Urbino was not concerned with proclaiming victory, norwas he moved to persevere in his social mission, for at that moment one of his wings was broken,he was distracted and in disarray and ready to forget everything else in life, because he had beenstruck by the lightning of his love for Fermina Daza.
36
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
It was, in fact, the result of a clinical error. A physician who was a friend of his thought hedetected the warning symptoms of cholera in an eighteen-year-old patient, and he asked Dr.
37
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
Juvenal Urbino to see her. He called that very afternoon, alarmed at the possibility that the plaguehad entered the sanctuary of the old city, for all the cases until that time had occurred in the poorneighbourhoods, and almost all of those among the black population. He encountered other, lessunpleasant, surprises. From the outside, the house, shaded by the almond trees in the Park of theEvangels, appeared to be in ruins, as did the others in the colonial district, but inside there was aharmony of beauty and an astonishing light that seemed to come from another age. The entranceopened directly into a square Sevillian patio that was white with a recent coat of lime and hadflowering orange trees and the same tiles on the floor as on the walls. There was an invisiblesound of running water, and pots with carnations on the cornices, and cages of strange birds in thearcades. The strangest of all were three crows in a very large cage, who filled the patio with anambiguous perfume every time they flapped their wings. Several dogs, chained elsewhere in thehouse, began to bark, maddened by the scent of a stranger, but a woman's shout stopped themdead, and numerous cats leapt all around the patio and hid among the flowers, frightened by theauthority in the voice. Then there was such a diaphanous silence that despite the disorder of thebirds and the syllables of water on stone, one could hear the desolate
38
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
breath of the sea.
39
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
Shaken by the conviction that God was present, Dr. Juvenal Urbino thought that such a housewas immune to the plague. He followed Gala Placidia along the arcaded corridor, passed by thewindow of the sewing room where Florentino Ariza had seen Fermina Daza for the first time,when the patio was still a shambles , climbed the new marble stairs to the second floor, and waitedto be announced before going into the patient's bedroom. But Gala Placidia came out again with amessage: "The se帽orita says you cannot come in now because her papa is not at home."And so he returned at five in the afternoon, in accordance with the maid's instructions, andLorenzo Daza himself opened the street door and led him to his daughter's bedroom. There heremained, sitting in a dark corner with his arms folded, and making futile efforts to control hisragged breathing during the examination. It was not easy to know who was more constrained , thedoctor with his chaste touch or the patient in the silk chemise with her virgin
40
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
's
41
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
modesty , butneither one looked the other in the eye; instead, he asked questions in an impersonal voice and sheresponded in a tremulous voice, both of them very conscious of the man sitting in the shadows. Atlast Dr. Juvenal Urbino asked the patient to sit up, and with exquisite care he opened hernightdress down to the waist; her pure high breasts with the childish nipples shone for an instant inthe darkness of the bedroom, like a flash of gunpowder , before she hurried to cover them withcrossed arms.
42
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
Imperturbable , the physician opened her arms without looking at her and examinedher by direct auscultation, his ear against her skin, first the chest and then the back.
43
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
Dr. Juvenal Urbino used to say that he experienced no emotion when he met the woman withwhom he would live until the day of his death. He remembered the sky-blue chemise edged inlace, the feverish eyes, the long hair hanging loose over her shoulders, but he was so concernedwith the outbreak of cholera in the colonial district that he took no notice of her floweringadolescence: he had eyes only for the slightest hint that she might be a victim of the plague. Shewas more explicit : the young doctor she had heard so much about in connection with the choleraepidemic seemed a pedant incapable of loving anyone but himself. The diagnosis was an intestinalinfection of alimentary origin, which was cured by three days of treatment at home. Relieved bythis proof that his daughter had not contracted cholera, Lorenzo Daza accompanied Dr. JuvenalUrbino to the door of his carriage, paid him a gold peso for the visit, a fee that seemed excessiveeven for a physician to the rich, and he said goodbye with immoderate expressions of gratitude.
44
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
He was overwhelmed by the splendour of the Doctor's family names, and he not only did not hideit but would have done anything to see him again, under less formal circumstances.
45
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
The case should have been considered closed. But on Tuesday of the following week, withoutbeing called and with no prior announcement, Dr. Juvenal Urbino returned to the house at theinconvenient hour of three in the afternoon. Fermina Daza was in the sewing room, having alesson in oil painting with two of her friends, when he appeared at the window in his spotlesswhite frock coat and his white top hat and signalled to her to come over to him. She put her palettedown on a chair and tiptoed to the window, her ruffled skirt raised to keep it from dragging on thefloor. She wore a diadem with a jewel that hung on her forehead, and the luminous stone was thesame aloof colour as her eyes, and everything in her breathed an aura of coolness. The Doctor wasstruck by the fact that she was dressed for painting at home as if she were going to a party. Hetook her pulse through the open window, he had her stick out her tongue, he examined her throatwith an aluminium tongue depressor, he looked inside her lower eyelids , and each time he noddedin approval. He was less inhibited
46
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
than on the previous visit, but she was more so, because shecould not understand the reason for the unexpected examination if he himself had said that hewould not come back unless they called him because of some change. And even more important: she did not ever want to see him again. When he finished his examination, the Doctor put thetongue depressor back into his bag, crowded with instruments and bottles of medicine, and closedit with a resounding snap.
47
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
"You are like a new-sprung rose," he said.
48
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
"Thank you.""Thank God," he said, and he misquoted St. Thomas: "Remember that everything that isgood, whatever its origin, comes from the Holy Spirit. Do you like music?""What is the point of that question?" she asked in turn.
49
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
"Music is important for one's health," he said.
50
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
He really thought it was, and she was going to know very soon, and for the rest of her life,that the topic of music was almost a magic formula that he used to propose friendship, but at thatmoment she interpreted it as a joke. Besides, her two friends, who had pretended to paint whileshe and Dr. Juvenal Urbino were talking at the window, tittered and hid their faces behind theirpalettes, and this made Fermina Daza lose her self-control. Blind with fury, she slammed thewindow shut. The Doctor stared at the sheer lace curtains in bewilderment, he tried to find thestreet door but lost his way, and in his confusion he knocked into the cage with the perfumedcrows. They broke into sordid shrieking , flapped their wings in fright, and saturated the Doctor'sclothing with a feminine fragrance
51
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
. The thundering voice of Lorenzo Daza rooted him to the spot:
52
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
"Doctor--wait for me there."He had seen everything from the upper floor and, swollen and livid, he came down the stairsbuttoning his shirt, his side-whiskers still in an uproar after a restless siesta
53
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
. The Doctor tried toovercome his embarrassment.
54
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
"I told your daughter that she is like a rose.""True enough," said Lorenzo Daza, "but one with too many thorns."He walked past Dr. Urbino without greeting him. He pushed open the sewing room windowand shouted a rough command to his daughter: "Come here and beg the Doctor's pardon."The Doctor tried to intervene and stop him, but Lorenzo Daza paid no attention to him. Heinsisted: "Hurry up." She looked at her friends with a secret plea for understanding, and she said toher father that she had nothing to beg pardon for, she had only closed the window to keep out thesun. Dr. Urbino, with good humour, tried to confirm her words, but Lorenzo Daza insisted that hebe obeyed. Then Fermina Daza, pale with rage, turned toward the window, and extending her rightfoot as she raised her skirt with her fingertips, she made a theatrical curtsy to the Doctor.
55
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
"I give you my most heartfelt apologies, sir," she said.
56
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
Dr. Juvenal Urbino imitated her with good humour, making a cavalier's flourish with his tophat, but he did not win the compassionate smile he had hoped for. Then Lorenzo Daza invited himto have a cup of coffee in his office to set things right, and he accepted with pleasure so that therewould be no doubt whatsoever that he did not harbour a shred of resentment in his heart.
57
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
The truth was that Dr. Juvenal Urbino did not drink coffee, except for a cup first thing in themorning. He did not drink alcohol either, except for a glass of wine with meals on solemnoccasions, but he not only drank down the coffee that Lorenzo Daza offered him, he also accepteda glass of anisette. Then he accepted another coffee with another anisette, and then another andanother, even though he still had to make a few more calls. At first he listened with attention to theexcuses that Lorenzo Daza continued to offer in the name of his daughter, whom he defined as anintelligent and serious girl, worthy of a prince whether he came from here or anywhere else,whose only defect, so he said, was her mulish character. But after the second anisette, the Doctorthought he heard Fermina Daza's voice at the other end of the patio, and his imagination went afterher, followed her through the night that had just descended in the house as she lit the lights in thecorridor, fumigated the bedrooms with the insecticide bomb, uncovered the pot of soup on thestove, which she was going to share that night with her father, the two of them alone at the table,she not raising her eyes, not tasting the soup, not breaking the rancorous spell, until he was forcedto give in and ask her to forgive his severity that afternoon.
58
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
Dr. Urbino knew enough about women to realise that Fermina Daza would not pass by theoffice until he left, but he stayed nevertheless because he felt that wounded pride would give himno peace after the humiliations of the afternoon. Lorenzo Daza, who by now was almost drunk,did not seem to notice his lack of attention, for he was satisfied with his own indomitableeloquence. He talked at full gallop , chewing the flower of his unlit cigar, coughing in shouts,trying to clear his throat, attempting with great difficulty to find a comfortable position in theswivel chair, whose springs wailed like an animal in heat. He had drunk three glasses of anisette toeach one drunk by his guest, and he paused only when he realised that they could no longer seeeach other, and he stood up to light the lamp. Dr. Juvenal Urbino looked at him in the new light,he saw that one eye was twisted like a fish's and that his words did not correspond to themovement of his lips, and he thought these were hallucinations brought on by his abuse of alcohol.
59
读书笔记
是否公开
我的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
网友的读书笔记
仅对会员开放
-
Then he stood up, with the fascinating sensation that he was inside a body that belonged not tohim but to someone who was still in the chair where he had been sitting, and he had to make agreat effort not to lose his mind.