标题：昔年种柳
基本信息
  memories of my melancholy whores加西亚.马尔克斯晚年小说《MemoriesofMyMelancholyWhores》,这是马尔克斯继《百年孤独》《霍乱时期的爱情》之后的又一小长篇。
这本书目前没有中文译本，由著名音乐制作人高晓松英译本转译而来。
中文名《昔年种柳》（高晓松版），书名《MemoriesofMyMelancholyWhores》，作者加西亚.马尔克斯，中文译者高晓松。
译文时间：2011年4月-8月（高晓松版）
内容简介
Memories of My Melancholy Whoresis Gabriel García Márquez’s first work of fiction in ten years, written at the height of his powers, the Spanish edition of which Ilan Stavans called, “Masterful. Erotic. As hypnotizing as it is disturbing” (Los Angeles Times).
  GabrielGarcíaMárquez（马尔克斯0On the eve of his ninetieth birthday, our unnamed protagonist–an undistinguished journalist and lifelong bachelor–decides to give himself “the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.”
The virgin, whom an old madam procures for him, is splendidly young, with the silent power of a sleeping beauty. The night of love blossoms into a transforming year. It is a year in which he relives, in a rush of memories, his lifetime of (paid-for) sexual adventures and experiences a revelation that brings him to the edge of dying–not of old age, but, at long last, of uncorrupted love. 
Memories of My Melancholy Whoresis a brilliant gem by the master storyteller.
作者简介
加夫列尔·马尔克斯1927年3 加布里尔·加西亚·马尔克斯月6日生于哥伦比亚阿拉卡塔卡。1940 年迁居首都波哥大。1947年入波哥大大学攻读法律，并开始文学创作。1948年因哥伦比亚内战中途辍学。不久他进入报界，任《观察家报》记者。1955年，他因连载文章揭露被政府美化了的海难而被迫离开哥伦比亚，任《观察家报》驻欧洲记者。1960年，任古巴拉丁通讯社记者。1961年至1967年，他移居墨西哥，从事文学、新闻和电影工作。之后他主要居住在墨西哥和欧洲，继续其文学创作。1975年，他为抗议智利政变举行文学罢工，搁笔5年。1982年，获诺贝尔文学奖，并任法国西班牙语文化交流委员会主席。1982年，哥伦比亚地震，他回到祖国。1999年得淋巴癌，此后文学产量遽减，2006年1月宣布封笔。  加夫列尔·加西亚·马尔克斯BECAUSE the great subject of the fiction of Gabriel García Márquez is time, no reader of his luminous, strange new book should fail to be aware of exactly how much time its author has spent on earth: on the day of the publication in English of "Memories of My Melancholy Whores," García Márquez will have lived 78 years, 7 months, 3 weeks and 4 days, and he continues to write, as he so often has, about the people for whom time has seemed to stand still. He has always been most interested in the extremely old and the extremely young - for the reason, I think, that our first experiences of the world and our last are the ones that stop us in our tracks, and turn the long confusion of our days into something like stories. 
Caleb Bach
GaM. K. Perker
The hero and heroine of "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" are a 90-year-old man and a 14-year-old girl, both nameless, who meet periodically in a room in Rosa Cabarcas's brothel - "the theater of our nights," the old man calls it - and, more constantly and more vividly, in his fevered imagination, where the curtain never comes down. The nonagenarian narrator is the latest in an illustrious line of cranky, obsessive García Márquez geezers, of which the most memorable, perhaps, is the romantic madman Florentino Ariza, whose determination to woo and win in his 70's the woman who spurned him in his 20's is the perpetual-motion machine that powers "Love in the Time of Cholera." But the writer was only in his late 50's, a mere pup, when he invented Florentino Ariza and granted that elderly fool for love the belated fulfillment of his desire. These days, García Márquez needs a dirtier, older dirty old man just to satisfy his insatiable taste for novelty, his lust for sudden and unforeseeable accesses of meaning, his itch to probe the mysteries of last things.
And the central codger of "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" seems, at least at the outset, a very dirty old man indeed. The story begins, with García Márquez's characteristic hit-the-ground-running conciseness, like this: "The year I turned 90, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin." A superb opening - Edith Grossman's translation is, here and elsewhere, elegant and exact - but not, perhaps, the sort of statement that generates waves of good feeling toward the speaker. The peculiar charm of this narrator, though, is that he really doesn't give a damn what his audience thinks of him. "I'm ugly, shy and anachronistic," he writes, by way of introducing himself, and he's just warming up. "I am the end of a line, without merit or brilliance," he calmly informs us; and despite enjoying some local fame as a critic and newspaper columnist in his native La Paz, he admits to being "a mediocre journalist." His lechery is, in fact, among his more attractive qualities; it is, in any event, one of the few areas in which he has truly distinguished himself. "I have never gone to bed with a woman I didn't pay," he writes, and with sheepish pride reports that he was "twice crowned client of the year" in the city's red-light district.
That brief moment of boastfulness is a rarity in "Memories of My Melancholy Whores." Mostly, this old man is beyond pride, and beyond shame, too. Because García Márquez doesn't often tell his tall tales in the first person, and because the story inevitably evokes comparisons to "Lolita," readers might expect this little book to be more of a departure from its author's usual, unmistakable style - the lulling, deadpan bedtime-story tone that has always enabled him to get away with both murder and the more improbable kinds of love. Some might even manage to persuade themselves that this monologue is, like Humbert Humbert's, an ironic apologia, a literary game whose object is to catch the speaker out in his evasions and self-deceptions.
But that's not at all what García Márquez is up to here. The cunning of "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" lies in the utter - and utterly unexpected - reliability of its narrator. This daft coot is, in his way, as trustworthy as St. Augustine (whom he does not, I hasten to add, otherwise resemble) because his story is, like the saint's, a conversion narrative. His reason for writing, he says, is to record "the beginning of a new life at an age when most mortals have already died," which means, of course, that he has no motive to be anything but brutally honest about the now-despised former life, the 90 years, to the minute, he "wasted" (his word) before seeing the light.
The light is, in this case, nothing celestial, just the "miracle of the first love of my life at the age of 90," the object of his passion being the anonymous teenage virgin whose naked body he rents from Rosa Cabarcas: a girl who is usually asleep when he comes to her, who rarely speaks even when she's awake, and with whom he does not consummate his physical desire. "I preferred her asleep," he admits, and, sounding disturbingly like James Stewart in "Vertigo," further confesses that "seeing and touching her in the flesh, she seemed less real to me than in my memory."
Yes, the young virgin - whom the old man calls Delgadina, after a girl in a song - is an abstraction, and that, as we all know, is no basis for a mature, healthy relationship. The wonderful joke of "Memories of My Melancholy Whores," though, is that its hero's life is changed by the late onset of a profoundly immature and not especially healthy emotion: the painful, idealizing, narcissistic romanticism of adolescence. And the narrator knows all too well how ludicrously out of season this desperate yearning is, how silly it is for a man his age - the whores' client of the year, no less - to be born again into puppy love.
Who needs Nabokovian verbal ironies when time itself plays practical jokes like this? The besotted old man of "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" may or may not actually deserve his 11th-hour redemption, but neither he nor García Márquez is inclined to question it too rigorously, to look this particular gift horse in the mouth. In the end, a marvel is a marvel, best left unexamined, and all any of us can do, this funny, dirty old story says, is laugh. The wisdom the narrator comes to after his great conversion is so mundane, so homely, it's hilarious: "When I woke alive on the first morning of my 90's in the happy bed of Delgadina, I was transfixed by the agreeable idea that life was not something that passes by like Heraclitus' ever-changing river but a unique opportunity to turn over on the grill and keep broiling on the other side for another 90 years."
"Memories of My Melancholy Whores" is García Márquez's first book of fiction in a decade - since "Of Love and Other Demons," which was also a short novel about an unlikely romance. He has filled that time with memoir-writing: the first, large volume of his autobiography, "Living to Tell the Tale," was published here in 2003. So perhaps it's natural, after 10 years of looking back, that he has now treated himself, and his readers, to this sprightly, perverse little fable about looking forward. Not many of the remarkable storytellers of Latin American literature's boom years are left: Borges and Cortázar are gone, and Puig and Donoso and Arenas; and earlier this year we lost the wily and passionate Guillermo Cabrera Infante, too. But Gabriel García Márquez is still around, turning on the grill, and gratefully. Although he has spent a bit less time in this world than the moonstruck narrator of his latest book, he is now old enough, at last, to feel that every new story arrives as a miracle, and to understand that as long as he writes he can keep being born again.
作品英译文（第一章）
日子翻回我九张儿那年，那时我打算送给自己一份生日好礼——找个雏儿，过个夜，撒点儿野。我想起了罗莎.卡巴卡斯同志，一个有了好果儿就立马发给熟客的地下老鸨。我之前从没中过伊的淫招儿，但伊也从没相信我是个脱离了低级趣味的清教徒。我拨电话时猜想伊肯定会一脸坏笑地对我说：清教徒也会被如梭岁月打败嘿嘿。 
鉴于这位老太太只比我小一点点并且好多年没了消息，我猜伊八成已经死了。没想到电话只响了一声就接通了，这嗓音我太熟了，于是我开门见山： 
到日子了！ 
伊先叹了口气，然后老练地夺回了主动：倒霉蛋大知识分子，你消失了二十年，一出现就要求那么高！ 
然后伊发了一串果儿，可惜都被人用过。我严词拒绝，坚持必须是雏儿，而且必须当晚就用！ 
伊提高了声调：你急着证明什么？ 
我伤不起，于是回答：不用证明！我自己清楚！能干干不能干就看！ 
伊不为所动：大知识分子自然什么都清楚，但隔行如隔山，告诉你，这世道就剩下处女座的人还敢自称处女了，比如八月底生人的你。你得给我时间！ 
那玩意儿说来就来！我说。 
那玩意儿可以持续！伊永远显得比男人渊博。 
然后伊提出用两天时间让伊做个彻底市场调研的小建议。 
我再度严词拒绝，说这种事儿对我这把年纪的人完全是度秒如年，一刻不能等。 
没戏！伊毫不犹豫地说——不过你还别说，这事儿还真他娘的刺激，你一小时之内等我电话！ 
不用我坦白从宽，正常人从二里地以外也能看出我又丑又腼又过时。直到今天，我的老良心让我正式承认这些老缺点之前，我都伪装得很好，甚至装成了这些词汇的反面。我今天敢给罗莎.卡巴卡斯同志打这个令人发指的电话，是因为我发现没几个人到了我这把年纪还好意思活着，我决定过一种崭新的，彪悍的人生。 
在圣尼古拉斯公园朝南的一侧，我住在一所殖民时期的房子里。爸爸妈妈曾在那儿活着并死去，我在那儿度过了我全部的单身无产者时光，并打算在我呱呱落地的那张床上悠久而孤单地无疾而终。 
爸爸赶在十九世纪终了的时候从政府拍卖中买到了这所房子。他把底层租给了一个卖奢侈品的意大利家族企业，自己住在二层，和这个家族的一个女儿——佛罗丽娜.德.迪奥斯.卡加曼妥思——杰出的莫扎特演奏者，会多种语言的意大利民族主义者，以及这座城市有史以来最美丽聪慧的女性——我的妈妈。 
房子宽敞明亮，有粉饰的穹顶和意大利马赛克地面，四扇玻璃门外是合围的阳台。早春的繁星夜，妈妈和她的表姐妹们会在那儿凭栏清唱爱之咏叹调。从那里望出去，越过圣尼古拉斯公园的巍巍教堂和哥伦布雕像，越过河岸码头上的层层仓库，越过莽莽地平线，大马格达莱纳河静静去往百里外的海洋。 
房子唯一的缺点是阳光会在白天依次照进每一扇窗，午睡时得把它们一扇扇关上。我32岁开始过形单影只的生活时，搬进了爸爸妈妈从前的卧室，打了一条通道去往书房，然后卖掉所有孤魂野鬼过日子用不着的东西——其实就是所有东西，除了书和一架会自动演奏的钢琴。 
我在《和平日报》当了40年电讯编辑，工作内容是拦截从空气中路过的短波电台和电报里的世界各地新闻，然后编写成本地人能看懂的小文章。这种早已被时代淘汰的工作如今给我提供着微薄的退休金，数目甚至比我教授国文和拉丁文法所得还少。我坚持写了半个世纪的星期天专栏几乎是免费的，更别提我那些吹捧偶尔来这座小城演出音乐和戏剧的半红不红艺术家们的小册子了，不让我倒贴钱已很幸福。 
除了写字，我不会干任何事，并且由于不善于编织戏剧化冲突，我连这门手艺也做不到高屋建瓴。之所以坚持写字这门营生是因为我相信这辈子看了那么多闲书，总会分泌点灵感吧。说白了，我排在长长的队尾，没啥荣誉和光环，没啥好意思留给后代，除了我打算用尽我全部脑浆子来记录的——我那可歌可泣的爱情。 
像所有的日子一样，我在90岁生日那天早上5点醒来。因为是个星期五，唯一需要做的事就是给《和平日报》写那个星期天专栏。这个早晨流年不利：后半夜开始骨头疼，屁眼像着了火，还有滚滚雷声预示着连续三个月大旱之后的暴风雨。我趁着煮咖啡的时候洗了个小澡，然后就着两片木薯面包喝下被蜂蜜搞得齁甜的一大杯，吃毕，才穿上我居家的麻布行头。 
这期专栏的主题必须是我的90大寿。我从没料到岁数这玩意能像房顶的窟窿数目一样让人清楚地数出你还有几天活头。在我很小的时候，听说人死后如果头发里的跳蚤逃进枕头会导致全家蒙羞。这刺激了我，让我从读书起就不停剪头，如今即使就剩下几根老毛，我也会用人家给流浪狗洗澡的那种强力去污肥皂使劲搓洗。暮然回首，原来我自幼就克己复礼，视死如归。 
我已酝酿了好几个月，以便让我的生日专栏不再像过去N年那样顾影自怜，而是相反地要为耄耋大唱赞歌。我从自己何时有感于自己老了开始动笔，因为那只是不久以前的事。 
在我42岁的时候，我因为背疼影响呼吸而去看过医生，该医生觉得没啥大不了：这类疼痛在你这岁数很正常。他说。 
“在我这岁数，”我说，“有什么是不正常的？” 
该大夫脸上浮现一种叫怜悯的，笑着说：我觉得你是个哲人。 
那瞬间我第一次琢磨了一下老去的问题，但没几天就忘了。接下来的发现是经常在不同时代的早上醒来，发现疼痛的部位神出鬼没。有时感觉死神已经冲着我舔爪子了，可第二天又遁去无踪。我听说人变老的第一个征兆是越长越像亲爹，这样看来我将永葆青春，因为我这张马脸无论如何也不像我爸的生猛加勒比样貌或是我妈那罗马雕塑般的容颜。实际上，改变是静悄悄进行的，你内心觉得你还是从前的那副皮囊，别人从皮囊外观察就不是那么回事了。 
活到五张儿多的时候我开始脑补我的老年生涯，因为我的记忆开始衰退：我会把房子掀个底朝天找眼镜最后发现它就在我脸上，然后带着眼镜去浴室冲澡，接下来就把老花镜戴在近视镜外面看书；有一天由于忘了已经吃过早点我吃了第二顿；我开始从朋友们担心的眼神里意识到他们不好意思提醒我正在讲上周刚给他们讲过的故事。于是我搞了两份记忆训练表，一份是熟人们的大头像，一份是他们的名字，把两张表一次次对应起来。可真到了该打招呼寒暄的时候，我又对不上号了。 
我的性能力并不依赖我本人，而是全靠妇女们，妇女们对这件事有“知”有“识”。我心中暗笑那些八张儿的小伙子们，他们不停咨询各种医生，担心某个悲催时刻的突然降临，殊不知到了九张儿他们会变得更加绝望。没啥大不了的，这就是活着的风险之一。可话又说回来，老了能忘记那些浮云般的烂事儿也是人生的成就之一。并且记忆这玩意儿是有选择的，古希腊雄辩家西塞罗同志曾经雄辩地指出：老家伙们永远记得最心爱的细软藏在哪个角落。 
基于以上胡思乱想，当然远不止这些——当八月的骄阳穿过杏树林梢，邮船带着因为干旱水浅而延迟了一周的远方来信驶进港口的引河，我写完了专栏的初稿，对镜默祷：给您请安，九十岁！ 
我不打算骗自己，好像我清楚为什么非要用淫荡之夜为自己庆生而给罗莎.卡巴卡斯同志打了那个电话，那只是鬼使神差或者叫魔幻使然。我的身体已经安详圣洁了多年，我的时间全部被用来看闲杂名著和去音乐厅被音乐搞嗨。可生日这天的欲火仿佛是被上帝点着了的炮仗。打完电话，我写不下去了。 
我把吊床挂在书房里早晨阳光沐浴不到的地方，躺下，在焦虑等待中胸口发闷。 
很久以前我曾是个富二代，直到我多才多艺的妈妈在五十岁上去世，然后是我那一丝不苟到即使一丝不挂也找不出一丝缺点的爸爸在单人床上合了眼——那天正是尼尔兰迪亚条约签订日，这份条约结束了“千日战争”和上个世纪数不清的内战。和平对这座小城的改造超出人们的憧憬。在一条原来叫安可大街，后来叫肮脏的阿贝罗现在叫帕西尔科隆的街上，成群结队获得解放的妇女们疯癫于酒肆。这座我灵魂之城的敦敦民风和淳淳阳光深深吸引了本地和外来的人们。 
我这辈子从没和不要钱的果儿上过床，对少数非职业性工作者，无论花言巧语还是强买强卖，反正最后都让她们收了钱——即使有些钱被个别妇女甩进垃圾桶里。 
我20岁的时候开始制作一份果儿单，记录与我发生过关系的妇女的姓名、年龄、住址和用简略符号标注的做爱偏好。到我53岁的时候这份表格排到了 514号。在身子骨实在对付不了那么多果儿之后，我不用表格也能随时联络到那寥寥无几的几枚，就终止了记录。我有我自己的伦理道德：我从不参加声色犬马的派对，也不在公共场合勾引妇女，从不泄露任何秘密，也不与任何人分享我无论是灵或肉的奇遇。因为我从小就相信：出来混早晚要还的。 
唯一与我保持了多年不寻常关系的是忠实可靠的达米阿娜（这名字也是壮阳药的意思。译者注）。如果可以称之为姑娘的话，伊是个有着印第安外观的强壮村姑，在我家帮佣干些粗活。我喜欢伊干活时赤着足蹑手蹑脚，不会打扰我写字。 
至今犹记我躺在门厅的吊床上读一本叫《傲慢的安达卢西亚姑娘》的书，忽然瞥见伊弯着腰在水房洗衣服，裙子短得露出了一轮比圆括号还圆的屁股。我欲火中烧，疾步上前一把掀起伊的裙子，裤衩扒至膝下，从后面搞了进去。 
“哦，老爷！”直到我完事拔出来，伊才带着哭腔说了这唯一的台词。身体不堪其辱地剧烈震颤但仍咬牙稳稳站着。我给伊的嫖资是最贵的果儿的两倍，可伊不拿群众一针一线。我只好把伊的薪水涨到差不多每月够搞一次的水平，每个月，照例在伊洗衣服的时候，照例从背后。 
一次我忽然想到整理这些香艳材料会有助于我书写自己迷茫不幸的人生，然后一瞬间，这部书的名字蹦入了脑海：《昔年种柳》。 
除了这些寻花问柳，我的日子了无生趣：父母双亡，单身无望，在印第安保留区的卡塔赫纳花博会诗歌比赛上四次入围未获奖，平庸小记者和一张只有漫画家盯着看的经典马脸。总之，自从19岁那个倒霉的下午，妈妈牵着我的手去往《和平日报》社，问人家能否刊登我在国文和修辞课上撰写的一篇校园生活流水账开始，我的生活就废了——文章在那个星期天登出来，还附有编辑大人鼓励的小序。很多年后我才知道，为了刊登那篇以及我接下来一发不可收的七篇稿子，妈妈付了报纸不少钱！不过我那时已经不感到羞耻了——我已经靠星期天专栏、电讯编辑和音乐评论营生了。 
我以优等成绩拿到学士学位后，就开始同时在三所公立中学教国文和拉丁文。我是个无培训无假期的穷教书匠，并且那些仅仅为了逃避家暴才来学校的孩子们对我也毫不施以同情。 
我唯一能做的就是用硬木戒尺震慑群小，这样最起码他们还能被迫诵读我最心爱的诗篇：哦，法比奥，多么忧伤，在你眼前的荒芜田园和阴霾山岗，曾经是明珠般的意大利市场。。。 
在老去后我对着镜子忽然明白了那时学生们在背后给我起的外号：阴霾山岗桑。 
这些就是生活给我的全部，我照单全收，不求多福。我在课间独自午餐，下午6点下课赶到报社编辑室，攫取划过星际的各种电波。晚上11点报社截稿，我的生活正式开始：我每周有两三个晚上睡在红灯区，也就是唐人街，临幸的果儿数量与品种之多以致于我一年之内两次获得最佳恩客桂冠。通常在左近的罗马咖啡馆胡乱搞完晚饭，我会随便逛进一间妓院，溜进后门。这是我的秘密乐趣，同时也是我工作的一部分——那些官老爷们爽了之后经常向熟果儿透露点政府机密，从没想到那些硬纸板糊的隔墙是多么不隔音。 
当然了，偶尔也能听到些关于本人的传闻，大概是说本人义无反顾地耍单儿不结婚的深层原因是从鸡奸街头不良少年中获得了极大快感。还好我脸皮厚，只要偷听到对我的人生价值稍有肯定的片言只语，就会立马忘了绯闻带来的不适。 
我的心房里没有朋友。唯一能蹭进来的是几条来自纽约的死魂灵。我觉得那座遥远的大城是五湖四海被判过刑的魂灵聚居之所，一个可以真切忘记过去的地方。 
退休之后我几乎无事可做，仅剩的正业就是每周五下午携着专栏小文章去趟报社。业余时间用如下事项填充：去贝拉音乐厅听音乐会，去我作为创始会员的艺术中心看画展，偶尔会出席公共改革社团的会议，或者一些更重要的活动比如法布雷加斯在阿波罗剧院的订婚仪式。 
年轻时我喜欢去看露天电影，兴奋于银幕之外的晴朗月蚀或者被瓢泼大雨浇成痨病鬼，但最嗨的还不是那些，而是时常能遇见不为名不为利就为一张电影票跟你上床的小果儿。可自从秀兰邓波尔也开始在银幕上犯骚，我对电影的最后一点热情也熄灭了。 
我的旅行经历仅限于三十岁前去过四次印第安保留区的卡塔赫纳花博会诗歌比赛，以及去圣塔玛塔参加萨克拉门托.蒙铁尔女士一座新妓院的开张庆典，那是个令人不快的快艇之夜。 
我的宅男生活乏善可陈，吃得少，不挑食。亲爱的达米阿娜老了之后已然停止给我做饭，从那时起我的正餐就是报社下班后去罗马咖啡馆搞一份土豆煎蛋卷充饥。 
九张儿前夕，没吃午饭，罗莎.卡巴卡斯的电话等得我心烦意乱，掩卷发呆。其时蝉鸣正午，骄阳似火。我被冲入窗棂的烈日逼得挪了三次吊床。多年来我已经习惯了在炎夏过生日，可是今天燥热的情绪让我很不习惯。四点钟我放出卡萨尔斯演奏的巴赫大提琴协奏曲企图让自己平静，结果这阙极品音乐不但没能如往日般轻拂我心，反而导致更加的悲催。第二乐章时我昏昏睡去，节奏仿佛越来越慢，大提琴于睡梦中幻化成长长的汽笛，如满怀悲伤远去的一叶孤舟。 
电话吵醒了我，罗莎.卡巴卡斯锈迹斑斑的声音把我拉回苍老的现实。 
傻人有傻福！伊说。“一枚长势喜人比你想的还妙的小果儿，只是有个缺点——她刚满14岁。” 
我没搞清伊的潜台词，于是喜道：我不在乎给人换尿片！ 
我才不在乎你在不在乎呢。她一字一句地说：我只在乎我为此将面临的三年牢狱之灾，我需要有人买单！（续）