Love in the Time of Cholera｜霍乱时期的爱情

原著作者｜加西亚·马尔克斯 A book in Nobel Prize literature writes down every form of love it is called Love in the Time of Cholera A man can keep changing bed partners while keeping his first love pure in his heart Six hundred and twenty lovers but waited for one person for fifty-three years At seventy-six years old he returned to his first love to fulfill that long waiting Is this love or is this a disease The story takes place in a small Caribbean town in the late nineteenth century when cholera was still spreading Florentino Ariza was a low-level clerk in the town poor as a church mouse but with a pair of melancholy eyes Fermina Daza was the daughter of the wealthy merchant Lorenzo young proud walking in the dusty world of mortal life Their meeting was a trick of fate Ariza went to Fermina's house to deliver a letter and saw her reading by the windowsill With just one glance Ariza was hopelessly in love Every day he sat on the garden bench pretending to read just to steal a glimpse of Fermina He started writing seventy-page love letters pouring all the brilliance of his soul into them In those days when carriages were slow and letters took time waiting and writing were a sweet torment Fermina was moved by this passionate sincerity For two years they never truly met face to face letters became the bond of their souls However Fermina's father discovered everything Lorenzo threatened Ariza with a gun and forcibly took Fermina away from her hometown This was a long inland journey meant to cut the thread of love but it unexpectedly became Fermina's rite of passage She rode in a mule-pulled cart across grasslands and mountains no longer a flower in a greenhouse becoming independent and mature Ariza did not give up he used his botanical knowledge to predict Fermina's route No matter where she went his letters always magically appeared there Every letter crossing mountains and rivers touched Fermina deeply At that time she believed this was love If the story ended here it would be a happy ending for the perfect couple But Marquez wrote the cruelest truth about love The journey ended Fermina returned to the small town That day on the street Ariza finally saw his beloved he had thought of day and night He excitedly stepped forward to greet her but Fermina turned around seeing not a white knight but a pale gloomy thin face At that moment she suddenly woke up all these years she had not loved this person in front of her but the imaginary phantom she had created in her mind She waved her hand and said the words that killed his heart No thank you forget it She returned all his letters along with the wilted camellia flower Camellias fall all at once just like her decisive love This moment of disillusionment completely ended their youthful love Fermina met Dr Juvenal Urbino through a misdiagnosis The doctor came from a noble family handsome and elegant an authoritative figure in the small town Under family pressure Fermina married the doctor becoming an enviable noble lady The marriage became mundane the doctor could give her the best material security but could not support her soul As for Ariza heartbroken he lived like a wandering spirit Watching his beloved marry someone else he was desperate and tormented During one voyage a strange woman forced herself upon him He discovered that physical pleasure though it could not heal the pain could at least temporarily numb the soul So Ariza began an absurd double life Keeping virginity for Fermina in his heart vowing to love only her in this lifetime But his body started chasing women wildly widows married women young girls he rejected none He recorded exactly six hundred and twenty-two lovers At the same time he realized to win Fermina back he must have more capital than the doctor He started climbing the ladder of the secular world starting from the bottom eventually becoming chairman of a shipping company accumulating great wealth He did all this for one goal to wait for the doctor to die This wait was exactly half a century One day the elderly doctor trying to catch a runaway parrot fell from a ladder and died instantly That night after the funeral when the guests had left an elderly man with white hair remained it was Florentino Ariza He walked with trembling steps but assumed a nearly perfect posture and spoke the words that had rested in his heart for fifty years I still love you Fermina was furious To talk about love at the moment her husband just died was an insult to the deceased She drove him away but she started reading the letters Ariza wrote Those were no longer passionate empty words but two old people's reflections on life aging and death The words slowly melted her lonely hardened heart in her later years In the end Fermina made a decision she boarded the riverboat Ariza had purchased beginning a journey across half the world前往小宇宙评论区与主播互动