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雙語·老實人 第十九章 他們在蘇利南的遭遇,老實人與瑪丁的相識

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2022年06月05日

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Chapter 19 What Happened to Them at Surinam, and How Candide Became Acquainted with Martin

Our travelers'frst day's journey was very pleasant;they were elated with the prospect of possessing more riches than were to be found in Europe, Asia, and Africa together. Candide, in amorous transports, cut the name of Miss Cunegund on almost every tree he came to.The second day two of their sheep sunk in a morass, and were swallowed up with their lading;two more died of fatigue;some few days afterwards seven or eight perished with hunger in a desert, and others, at different times, tumbled down precipices, or were otherwise lost, so that, after traveling about a hundred days they had only two sheep left of the hundred and two they brought with them from El Dorado.

Said Candide to Cacambo,“You see, my dear friend, how perishable the riches of this world are;there is nothing solid but virtue.”

“Very true,”said Cacambo,“but we have still two sheep remaining, with more treasure than ever the King of Spain will be possessed of;and I espy a town at a distance, which I take to be Surinam, a town belonging to the Dutch. We are now at the end of our troubles, and at the beginning of happiness.”

As they drew near the town they saw a Negro stretched on the ground with only one half of his habit, which was a kind of linen frock;for the poor man had lost his left leg and his right hand.

“Good God,”said Candide in Dutch,“what dost thou here, friend, in this deplorable condition?”

“I am waiting for my master, Mynheer Vanderdendur, the famous trader,”answered the Negro.

“Was it Mynheer Vanderdendur that used you in this cruel manner?”

“Yes, sir,”said the Negro;“it is the custom here. They give a linen garment twice a year, and that is all our covering.When we labor in the sugar works, and the mill happens to snatch hold of a fnger, they instantly chop off our hand;and when we attempt to run away, they cut off a leg.Both these cases have happened to me, and it is at this expense that you eat sugar in Europe;and yet when my mother sold me for ten patacoons on the coast of Guinea, she said to me,‘My dear child, bless our fetishes;adore them forever;they will make thee live happy;thou hast the honor to be a slave to our lords the whites, by which thou wilt make the fortune of us thy parents.'

“Alas!I know not whether I have made their fortunes;but they have not made mine;dogs, monkeys, and parrots are a thousand times less wretched than I. The Dutch fetishes who converted me tell me every Sunday that the blacks and whites are all children of one father, whom they call Adam.As for me, I do not understand anything of genealogies;but if what these preachers say is true, we are all second cousins;and you must allow that it is impossible to be worse treated by our relations than we are.”

“O Pangloss!”cried out Candide,“such horrid doings never entered thy imagination. Here is an end of the matter.I find myself, after all, obliged to renounce thy Optimism.”

“Optimism,”said Cacambo,“what is that?”

“Alas!”replied Candide,“it is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.”

And so saying he turned his eyes towards the poor Negro, and shed a food of tears;and in this weeping mood he entered the town of Surinam.

Immediately upon their arrival our travelers inquired if there was any vessel in the harbor which they might send to Buenos Ayres. The person they addressed themselves to happened to be the master of a Spanish bark, who offered to agree with them on moderate terms, and appointed them a meeting at a public house.Thither Candide and his faithful Cacambo went to wait for him, taking with them their two sheep.

Candide, who was all frankness and sincerity, made an ingenuous recital of his adventures to the Spaniard, declaring to him at the same time his resolution of carrying off Miss Cunegund from the Governor of Buenos Ayres.

“Oh, ho!”said the shipmaster,“if that is the case, get whom you please to carry you to Buenos Ayres;for my part, I wash my hands of the affair. It would prove a hanging matter to us all.The fair Cunegund is the Governor's favorite mistress.”

These words were like a clap of thunder to Candide;he wept bitterly for a long time, and, taking Cacambo aside, he said to him,“I'll tell you, my dear friend, what you must do. We have each of us in our pockets to the value of fve or six millions in diamonds;you are cleverer at these matters than I;you must go to Buenos Ayres and bring off Miss Cunegund.If the Governor makes any diffculty give him a million;if he holds out, give him two;as you have not killed an Inquisitor, they will have no suspicion of you.I'll ft out another ship and go to Venice, where I will wait for you.Venice is a free country, where we shall have nothing to fear from Bulgarians, Abares, Jews or Inquisitors.”

Cacambo greatly applauded this wise resolution. He was inconsolable at the thoughts of parting with so good a master, who treated him more like an intimate friend than a servant;but the pleasure of being able to do him a service soon got the better of his sorrow.They embraced each other with a food of tears.Candide charged him not to forget the old woman.Cacambo set out the same day.This Cacambo was a very honest fellow.

Candide continued some days longer at Surinam, waiting for any captain to carry him and his two remaining sheep to Italy. He hired domestics, and purchased many things necessary for a long voyage;at length Mynheer Vanderdendur, skipper of a large Dutch vessel, came and offered his service.

“What will you have,”said Candide,“to carry me, my servants, my baggage, and these two sheep you see here, directly to Venice?”

The skipper asked ten thousand piastres, and Candide agreed to his demand without hestitation.

“Ho, ho!”said the cunning Vanderdendur to himself,“this stranger must be very rich;he agrees to give me ten thousand piastres without hesitation.”

Returning a little while after, he told Candide that upon second consideration he could not undertake the voyage for less than twenty thousand.

“Very well;you shall have them,”said Candide.

“Zounds!”said the skipper to himself,“this man agrees to pay twenty thousand piastres with as much ease as ten.”

Accordingly he went back again, and told him roundly that he would not carry him to Venice for less than thirty thousand piastres.

“Then you shall have thirty thousand,”said Candide.

“Odso!”said the Dutchman once more to himself,“thirty thousand piastres seem a trifle to this man. Those sheep must certainly be laden with an immense treasure.I'll e'en stop here and ask no more;but make him pay down the thirty thousand piastres, and then we may see what is to be done farther.”

Candide sold two small diamonds, the least of which was worth more than all the skipper asked. He paid him beforehand, the two sheep were put on board, and Candide followed in a small boat to join the vessel in the road.The skipper took advantage of his opportunity, hoisted sail, and put out to sea with a favorable wind.Candide, confounded and amazed, soon lost sight of the ship.

“Alas!”said he,“this is a trick like those in our old world!”

He returned back to the shore overwhelmed with grief;and, indeed, he had lost what would have made the fortune of twenty monarchs.

Straightway upon his landing he applied to the Dutch magistrate;being transported with passion he thundered at the door, which being opened, he went in, told his case, and talked a little louder than was necessary. The magistrate began with fining him ten thousand piastres for his petulance, and then listened very patiently to what he had to say, promised to examine into the affair on the skipper's return, and ordered him to pay ten thousand piastres more for the fees of the court.

This treatment put Candide out of all patience;it is true, he had suffered misfortunes a thousand times more grievous, but the cool insolence of the judge, and the villainy of the skipper raised his choler and threw him into a deep melancholy. The villainy of mankind presented itself to his mind in all its deformity, and his soul was a prey to the most gloomy ideas.After some time, hearing that the captain of a French ship was ready to set sail for Bordeaux, as he had no more sheep loaded with diamonds to put on board, he hired the cabin at the usual price;and made it known in the town that he would pay the passage and board of any honest man who would give him his company during the voyage;besides making him a present of ten thousand piastres, on condition that such person was the most dissatisfied with his condition, and the most unfortunate in the whole province.

Upon this there appeared such a crowd of candidates that a large feet could not have contained them. Candide, willing to choose from among those who appeared most likely to answer his intention, selected twenty, who seemed to him the most sociable, and who all pretended to merit the preference.He invited them to his inn, and promised to treat them with a supper, on condition that every man should bind himself by an oath to relate his own history;declaring at the same time, that he would make choice of that person who should appear to him the most deserving of compassion, and the most justly dissatisfed with his condition in life;and that he would make a present to the rest.

This extraordinary assembly continued sitting till four in the morning. Candide, while he was listening to their adventures, called to mind what the old woman had said to him in their voyage to Buenos Ayres, and the wager she had laid that there was not a person on board the ship but had met with great misfortunes.Every story he heard put him in mind of Pangloss.

“My old master,”said he,“would be confoundedly put to it to demonstrate his favorite system. Would he were here!Certainly if everything is for the best, it is in El Dorado, and not in the other parts of the world.”

At length he determined in favor of a poor scholar, who had labored ten years for the booksellers at Amsterdam:being of opinion that no employment could be more detestable.

This scholar, who was in fact a very honest man, had been robbed by his wife, beaten by his son, and forsaken by his daughter, who had run away with a Portuguese. He had been likewise deprived of a small employment on which he subsisted, and he was persecuted by the clergy of Surinam, who took him for a Socinian.It must be acknowledged that the other competitors were, at least, as wretched as he;but Candide was in hopes that the company of a man of letters would relieve the tediousness of the voyage.All the other candidates complained that Candide had done them great injustice, but he stopped their mouths by a present of a hundred piastres to each.

第十九章 他們在蘇利南的遭遇,老實人與瑪丁的相識

路上第一天過得還愉快。想到自己的財富比歐、亞、非三洲的總數(shù)還要多,兩人不由得興致十足。老實人興奮之下,到處把居內(nèi)貢的名字刻在樹上。第二天,兩頭羊連著貨物陷入沼澤;過了幾日,另外兩頭不堪勞頓,倒斃了;接著又有七八頭在沙漠中餓死;幾天之后,又有些墮入深谷。走了一百天,只剩下兩頭羊。

老實人對加剛菩道:“你瞧,塵世的財富多么脆弱;只有德行和重見居內(nèi)貢小姐的快樂才可靠?!?/p>

加剛菩答道:“對。可是我們還剩下兩頭羊,西班牙王一輩子也休想有它們身上的那些寶物。我遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)地看到一個市鎮(zhèn),大概就是荷蘭屬的蘇利南。好啦,咱們苦盡甘來了?!?/p>

靠近市鎮(zhèn),他們瞧見地下躺著一個黑人,衣服只剩一半,就是說只穿一條藍(lán)布短褲:那可憐蟲少了一條左腿,缺了一只右手。

老實人用荷蘭話問他:“唉,天哪!你這個樣子好不凄慘,待在這兒干什么呢?”

黑人回答:“我等著我的東家,大商人范特登杜[36]先生。”

老實人說:“可是范特登杜先生這樣對待你的?”

“是的,先生;這是老例章程。他們每年給我們兩條藍(lán)布短褲,算是全部衣著。我們在糖廠里給磨子碾去一個手指,他們就砍掉我們的手;要是想逃,就割下一條腿:這兩樁我都碰上了。我們付了這代價,你們歐洲人才有糖吃??墒悄赣H在幾尼亞海邊得了十塊錢把我賣掉的時節(jié),和我說:‘親愛的孩子,你得感謝我們的神道,永遠(yuǎn)向他們禮拜,他們會降福于你;你好大面子,當(dāng)上咱們白大人的奴隸;你爹媽也靠著你發(fā)跡了?!?/p>

“唉!我不知他們有沒有靠著我發(fā)跡。反正我沒有托他們的福。狗啊,猴子啊,鸚鵡啊,都不像我們這么苦命。人家教我改信荷蘭神道,每星期日告訴我們,說我們不分黑白,全是亞當(dāng)?shù)暮⒆印N也欢易V;但布道師說得不錯,我們都是嫡堂兄弟。可是你得承認(rèn),對待本家不能比他們更辣手了?!?/p>

“噢,邦葛羅斯!”老實人嚷道,“你可沒想到這種慘無人道的事。得啦得啦,我不再相信你的樂天主義了?!?/p>

“什么叫作樂天主義?”加剛菩問。

“唉!就是吃苦的時候一口咬定百事順利?!?/p>

老實人瞧著黑人,掉下淚來。他一邊哭一邊進(jìn)了蘇利南。

他們第一先打聽,港內(nèi)可有船把他們載往布韋諾斯·愛累斯。問到的正是一個西班牙船主,答應(yīng)跟他們公平交易,約在一家酒店里談判。老實人和加剛菩便帶著兩頭羊上那邊去等。

老實人心直口快,把經(jīng)過情形向西班牙人和盤托出,連要搶走居內(nèi)貢小姐的計劃也實說了。

船主回答:“我才不送你們上布韋諾斯·愛累斯去呢;我要被吊死,你們倆也免不了。美人居內(nèi)貢如今是總督大人最得寵的外室。”

老實人聽了好比晴天霹靂,哭了半日,終于把加剛菩拉過一邊,說道:“好朋友,還是這么辦吧:咱們每人口袋里都有價值五六百萬的鉆石;你比我精明;你上布韋諾斯·愛累斯去接居內(nèi)貢小姐。要是總督作難,給他一百萬;再不肯,給他兩百萬。你沒殺過主教,他們不會防你的。我另外包一條船,上佛尼市等你;那是個自由地方,不用怕保加利亞人,也不用怕阿伐爾人,也不必?fù)?dān)心猶太人和異教裁判所?!?/p>

加剛菩一聽這妙計,拍手叫好;但要跟好東家分手,不由得悲從中來,因為他們倆已經(jīng)成為知心朋友了。幸而他還能替主人出力,加剛菩想到這一點,就轉(zhuǎn)悲為喜,忘了分離的痛苦。兩人抱頭大哭了一場;老實人又吩咐他別忘了那老媽子。加剛菩當(dāng)日就動身。他可真是個好人哪。

老實人在蘇利南又住了一晌,希望另外有個船主,肯把他和那碩果僅存的兩頭綿羊載往意大利。他雇了幾個用人,把長途航行所需要的雜物也辦齊了。終于有一天,一條大帆船的主人,范特登杜先生,來找他了。

老實人道:“你要多少錢,才肯把我、我的下人、行李還有兩頭綿羊,一徑載往佛尼市?”

船主討價一萬銀洋。老實人一口答應(yīng)了。

機(jī)靈的范特登杜在背后說:“噢!噢!這外國人一出手就是一萬!準(zhǔn)是個大富翁。”過了一會便回去聲明,少了兩萬不能開船。

老實人回答:“兩萬就兩萬?!?/p>

“哎??!”那商人輕輕地自言自語,“這家伙花兩萬跟一萬一樣的滿不在乎。”

他又回去,說少了三萬不能把他送往佛尼市。

老實人回答:“好,依你三萬就是了?!?/p>

“噢!噢!”荷蘭人對自己說,“三萬銀洋還不在他眼里;可見兩頭綿羊一定馱著無價之寶。別多要了,先教他付了三萬,再瞧著辦?!?/p>

老實人賣了兩顆小鉆,其中一顆很小的,價值就不止船主所要的數(shù)目。他先付了錢。兩頭綿羊裝上去了。老實人跟著坐了一條小艇,預(yù)備過渡到港中的大船上。船長認(rèn)為時機(jī)已到,趕緊扯起篷來,解纜而去,又遇著順風(fēng)幫忙。老實人看著,目瞪口呆,一剎那就不見了帆船的蹤影。他叫道:“哎喲!這一招倒比得上舊大陸的杰作?!彼氐桨渡希f不出多么痛苦,因為抵得上一二十位國王財富的寶物,都白送了。

他跑去見荷蘭法官;性急慌忙,敲門不免敲得太粗暴了些;進(jìn)去說明案由,叫嚷的聲音不免太高了些。法官因為他鬧了許多聲響,先罰他一萬銀洋,方始耐性聽完老實人的控訴,答應(yīng)等那商人回來,立即審理。末了又要老實人繳付一萬銀洋訟費(fèi)。

這種作風(fēng)把老實人氣壞了;不錯,他早先遇到的倒霉事兒,給他的痛苦還百倍于此;但法官和船主這樣不動聲色地欺負(fù)人,使他動了肝火,悲觀到極點。人心的險毒丑惡,他完全看到了,一肚子全是憂郁的念頭。后來有條開往波爾多的法國船:他既然丟了滿載鉆石的綿羊,便花了很公道的代價,包下一間房艙。他又在城里宣布,要找一個誠實君子做伴,船錢飯食,一應(yīng)歸他,再送兩千銀洋酬勞。但這個人必須是本省遭遇最苦、最怨恨自己的行業(yè)的人。

這樣就招來一大群應(yīng)征的人,便是包一個艦隊也容納不下。老實人存心要在最值得注目的一批中去挑,當(dāng)場選出一二十個看來還和氣,又自命為最有資格入選的人,邀到酒店里,請他們吃飯;條件是要他們發(fā)誓,毫不隱瞞地說出自己的歷史。老實人聲明,他要挑一個他認(rèn)為最值得同情、最有理由怨恨自己行業(yè)的人;其余的一律酌送現(xiàn)金,作為酬報。

這個會直開到清早四點。老實人聽著他們的遭遇,一邊想著老婆子當(dāng)初來的時候說的話,賭的東道,斷定船上沒有一個人不受過極大的災(zāi)難。每聽一個故事,他必想著邦葛羅斯,他道:“恐怕邦葛羅斯不容易再證明他的學(xué)說了吧!可惜他不在這里。世界上果真有什么樂土,那一定是黃金國,決不在別的地方?!蹦┝怂糁幸粋€可憐的學(xué)者,在阿姆斯特登的書店里做過十年事。他認(rèn)為世界上沒有一個職業(yè)比他的更可厭的了。

那學(xué)者原是個好好先生,被妻子偷盜,被兒子毆打,被跟著一個葡萄牙人私奔的女兒遺棄。他靠著過活的小差事,最近也丟了;蘇利南的牧師還迫害他,說他是索星尼派[37]。其實別的人至少也跟他一樣倒霉;但老實人暗中希望這學(xué)者能在路上替他消愁解悶。其余的候選人認(rèn)為老實人極不公平,老實人每人送了一百銀洋,平了大家的氣。

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