1YEARS LATER on his deathbed Aureliano Segundo would remember the rainy afternoon in June

2when he went into the bedroom to meet his first son. Even though the child was languid and weepy,

3with no mark of a Buendia, he did not have to think twice about naming him.

4“We’ll call him Jose Arcadio,” he said.

5Fernanda del Carpio, the beautiful woman he had married the year before, agreed. Ursula, on the

6other hand, could not conceal a vague feeling of doubt. Throughout the long history of the family

7the insistent repetition of names had made her draw some conclusions that seemed to be certain.

8While the Aurelianos were withdrawn, but with lucid minds, the Jose Arcadios were impulsive and

9enterprising, but they were marked with a tragic sign. The only cases that were impossible to classify

10were those of Jose Arcadio Segundo and Aureliano Segundo. They were so much alike and so

11mischievous during childhood that not even Santa Sofia de la Piedad could tell them apart. On the

12day of their christening Amaranta put bracelets on them with their respective names and dressed

13them in different colored clothing marked with each one’s initials, but when they began to go to

14school they decided to exchange clothing and bracelets and call each other by opposite names. The

15teacher, Melchor Escalona, used to knowing Jose Arcadio Segundo by his green shirt, went out of

16his mind when he discovered that the latter was wearing Aureliano Segundo’s bracelet and that the

17other one said, nevertheless, that his name was Aureliano Segundo in spite of the fact that he was

18wearing the white shirt and the bracelet with Jose Arcadio Segundo’s name. From then on he was

19never sure who was who. Even when they grew up and life made them different. Ursula still

20wondered if they themselves might not have made a mistake in some moment of their intricate game

21of confusion and had become changed forever. Until the beginning of adolescence they were two

22synchronized machines. They would wake up at the same time, have the urge to go to the bathroom

23at the same time, suffer the same upsets in health, and they even dreamed about the same things. In

24the house, where it was thought that they coordinated their actions with a simple desire to confuse,

25no one realized what really was happening until one day when Santa Sofia de la Piedad gave one of

26them a glass of lemonade and as soon as he tasted it the other one said that it needed sugar. Santa

27Sofia de la Piedad, who had indeed forgotten to put sugar in the lemonade, told Ursula about it.

28“That’s what they’re all like,” she said without surprise, “crazy from birth.” In time things became

29less disordered. The one who came out of the game of confusion with the name of Aureliano

30Segundo grew to monumental size like his grandfathers, and the one who kept the name of Jose

31Arcadio Segundo grew to be bony like the colonel, and the only thing they had in common was the

32family’s solitary air. Perhaps it was that crossing of stature, names, and character that made Ursula

33suspect that they had been shuffled like a deck of cards since childhood.

34The decisive difference was revealed in the midst of the war, when Jose Arcadio Segundo asked

35Colonel Gerineldo Marquez to let him see an execution. Against Ursula’s better judgment his wishes

36were satisfied. Aureliano Segundo, on the other hand, shuddered at the mere idea of witnessing an

37execution. He preferred to stay home. At the age of twelve he asked Ursula what was in the locked

38room. “Papers,” she answered. “Melquiades’ books and the strange tilings that he wrote in his last

39years.” Instead of calming him, the answer increased his curiosity. He demanded so much, promised

40with such insistence that he would not mistreat the things, that Ursula, gave him the keys. No one

41had gone into the room again since they had taken Melquiades’ body out and had put on the door a

42padlock whose parts had become fused together with rust. But when Aureliano Segundo opened the

43windows a familiar light entered that seemed accustomed to lighting the room every day and there

44was not the slightest trace of dust or cobwebs, with everything swept and clean, better swept and

45cleaner than on the day of the burial, and the ink had not dried up in the inkwell nor had oxidation

46diminished the shine of the metals nor had the embers gone out under the water pipe where Jose

47Arcadio Buendia had vaporized mercury. On the shelves were the books bound in a cardboard-like

48material, pale, like tanned human skin, and the manuscripts were intact. In spite of the room’s

49having been shut up for many years, the air seemed fresher than in the rest of the house. Everything

50was so recent that several weeks later, when Ursula went into the room with a pail of water and a

51brush to wash the floor, there was nothing for her to do. Aureliano Segundo was deep in the reading

52of a book. Although it had no cover and the title did not appear anywhere, the boy enjoyed the story

53of a woman who sat at a table and ate nothing but kernels of rice, which she picked up with a pin,

54and the story of the fisherman who borrowed a weight for his net from a neighbor and when he

55gave him a fish in payment later it had a diamond in its stomach, and the one about the lamp that

56fulfilled wishes and about flying carpets. Surprised, he asked Ursula if all that was true and she

57answered him that it was, that many years ago the gypsies had brought magic lamps and flying mats

58to Macondo.

59“What’s happening,” she sighed, “is that the world is slowly coming to an end and those things

60don’t come here any more. ”

61When he finished the book, in which many of the stories had no endings because there were

62pages missing, Aureliano Segundo set about deciphering the manuscripts. It was impossible. The

63letters looked like clothes hung out to dry on a line and they looked more like musical notation than

64writing. One hot noontime, while he was poring over the, manuscripts, he sensed that he was not

65alone in the room. Against the light from the window, sitting with his hands on Inis knees, was

66Melquiades. He was under forty years of age. He was wearing the same old-fashioned vest and the

67hat that looked like a raven’s wings, and across Inis pale temples there flowed the grease from his hair

68that had been melted by the heat, just as Aureliano and Jose Arcadio had seen him when they were

69children. Aureliano Segundo recognized him at once, because that hereditary memory had been

70transmitted from generation to generation and had come to him through the memory of his

71grandfather.

72“Hello,” Aureliano Segundo said.

73“Hello, young man,” said Melquiades.

74From then on, for several years, they saw each other almost every afternoon. Melquiades talked

75to him about the world, tried to infuse him with his old wisdom, but he refused to translate the

76manuscripts. “No one must know their meaning until he has reached one hundred years of age,” he

77explained. Aureliano kept those meetings secret forever. On one occasion he felt that his private

78world had fallen apart because Ursula came in when Melquiades was in the room. But she did not

79see him.

80“Who were you talking to?” she asked him.

81“Nobody,” Aureliano Segundo said.

82“That’s what your great-grandfather did,” Ursula, said. “He used to talk to himself too.”

83Jose Arcadio Segundo, in the meantime, had satisfied his wish to see a shooting. For the rest of

84his life he would remember the livid flash of the six simultaneous shots-and the echo of the

85discharge as it broke against the hills and the sad smile and perplexed eyes of the man being shot,

86who stood erect while his shirt became soaked with blood, and who was still smiling even when they

87untied him from the post and put him in a box filled with quicklime. “He’s alive,” he thought.

88“They’re going to bury him alive.” It made such an impression on him that from then on he

89detested military practices and war, not because of the executions but because of the horrifying

90custom of burying the victims alive. No one knew then exactly when he began to ring the bells in

91the church tower and assist Father Antonio Isabel, the successor to “The Pup,” at mass, and take

92can of the fighting cocks in the courtyard of the parish house. When Colonel Gerineldo Marquez

93found out he scolded him strongly for learning occupations repudiated by the Liberals. “The fact is,”

94he answered, “I think I’ve turned out to be a Conservative.” He believed it as if it had been

95determined by fate. Colonel Gerineldo Marquez, scandalized, told Ursula about it.

96“It’s better that way,” she approved. “Let’s hope that he becomes a priest so that God will finally

97come into this house. ”

98It was soon discovered that Father Antonio Isabel was preparing him for his first communion.

99He was teaching him the catechism as he shaved the necks of his roosters. He explained to him with

100simple examples, as he put the brooding hens into their nests, how it had occurred to God on the

101second day of creation that chickens would be formed inside of an egg. From that time on the

102parish priest began to show the signs of senility that would lead him to say years later that the devil

103had probably won his rebellion against God, and that he was the one who sat on the heavenly

104throne, without revealing his true identity in order to trap the unwary. Warmed up by the persistence

105of his mentor, in a few months Jose Arcadio Segundo came to be as adept in theological tricks used

106to confuse the devil as he was skilled in the tricks of the cockpit. Amaranta made him a linen suit

107with a collar and tie, bought him a pair of white shoes, and engraved his name in gilt letters on the

108ribbon of the candle. Two nights before the first communion, Father Antonio Isabel closeted

109himself with him in the sacristy to hear his confession with the help of a dictionary of sins. It was

110such a long list that the aged priest, used to going to bed at six o’clock, fell asleep in his chair before

111it was over. The interrogation was a revelation for Jose Arcadio Segundo. It did not surprise him

112that the priest asked him if he had done bad things with women, and he honestly answered no, but

113he was upset with the question as to whether he had done them with animals. The first Friday in

114May he received communion, tortured by curiosity. Later on he asked Petronio, the sickly sexton

115who lived in the belfry and who, according to what they said, fed himself on bats, about it, and

116Petronio, answered him: “There are some corrupt Christians who do their business with female

117donkeys.” Jose Arcadio Segundo still showed so much curiosity and asked so many questions that

118Petronio lost his patience.

119“I go Tuesday nights,” he confessed, “if you promise not to tell anyone I’ll take you next

120Tuesday. ”

121Indeed, on the following Tuesday Petronio came down out of the tower with a wooden stool

122which until then no one had known the use of, and he took Jose Arcadio Segundo to a nearby

123pasture. The boy became so taken with those nocturnal raids that it was a long time before he was

124seen at Catarino’s. He became a cockfight man. “Take those creatures somewhere else,” Ursula

125ordered him the first time she saw him come in with his fine fighting birds. “Roosters have already

126brought too much bitterness to this house for you to bring us any more.” Jose Arcadio Segundo

127took them away without any argument, but he continued breeding them at the house of Pilar

128Ternera, his grandmother, who gave him everything he needed in exchange for having him in her

129house. He soon displayed in the cockpit the wisdom that Father Antonio Isabel had given him, and

130he made enough money not only to enrich Inis brood but also to look for a man’s satisfactions.

131Ursula compared him with his brother at that time and could not understand how the twins, who

132looked like the same person in childhood, had ended up so differently. Her perplexity did not last

133very long, for quite soon Aureliano Segundo began to show signs of laziness and dissipation. While

134he was shut up in Melquiades’ room he was drawn into himself the way Colonel Aureliano Buendia

135had been in his youth. But a short time after the Treaty of Neerlandia, a piece of chance took him

136out of his withdrawn self and made him face the reality of the world. A young woman who was

137selling numbers for the raffle of an accordion greeted him with a great deal of familiarity. Aureliano

138Segundo was not surprised, for he was frequently confused with his brother. But he did not clear up

139the mistake, not even when the girl tried to soften his heart with sobs, and she ended taking him to

140her room. She liked him so much from that first meeting that she fixed things so that he would win

141the accordion in the raffle. At the end of two weeks Aureliano Segundo realized that the woman had

142been going to bed alternately with him and his brother, thinking that they were the same man, and

143instead of making tilings clear, he arranged to prolong the situation. He did not return to

144Melquiades’ room. He would spend his afternoons in the courtyard, learning to play the accordion

145by ear over the protests of Ursula, who at that time had forbidden music in the house because of the

146mourning and who, in addition, despised the accordion as an instmment worthy only of the

147vagabond heirs of Francisco the Man. Nevertheless, Aureliano Segundo became a virtuoso on the

148accordion and he still was after he had married and had children and was one of the most respected

149men in Macondo.

150For almost two months he shared the woman with his brother. He would watch him, mix up his

151plans, and when he was sure that Jose Arcadio Segundo was not going to visit their common

152mistress that night, he would go and sleep with her. One morning he found that he was sick. Two

153days later he found his brother clinging to a beam in the bathroom, soaked in sweat and with tears

154pouring down, and then he understood. His brother confessed to him that the woman had sent him

155away because he had given her what she called a low-life sickness. He also told him how Pilar

156Ternera had tried to cure him. Aureliano Segundo submitted secretly to the burning baths of

157permanganate and to diuretic waters, and both were cured separately after three months of secret

158suffering. Jose Arcadio Segundo did not see the woman again. Aureliano Segundo obtained her

159pardon and stayed with her until his death.

160Her name was Petra Cotes. She had arrived in Macondo in the middle of the war with a chalice

161husband who lived off raffles, and when the man died she kept up the business. She was a clean

162young mulatto woman with yellow almond-shaped eyes that gave her face the ferocity of a panther,

163but she had a generous heart and a magnificent vocation for love. When Ursula realized that Jose

164Arcadio Segundo was a cockfight man and that Aureliano Segundo played the accordion at his

165concubine’s noisy parties, she thought she would go mad with the combination. It was as if the

166defects of the family and none of the virtues had been concentrated in both. Then she decided that

167no one again would be called Aureliano or Jose Arcadio. Yet when Aureliano Segundo had his first

168son she did not dare go against his will.

169“All right,” Ursula said, “but on one condition: I will bring him up.”

170Although she was already a hundred years old and on the point of going blind from cataracts, she

171still had her physical dynamism, her integrity of character, and her mental balance intact. No one

172would be better able than she to shape the virtuous man who would restore the prestige of the

173family, a man who would never have heard talk of war, fighting cocks, bad women, or wild

174undertakings, four calamities that, according to what Ursula thought, had determined the downfall,

175of their line. “This one will be a priest,” she promised solemnly. “And if God gives me life he’ll be

176Pope someday.” They all laughed when they heard her, not only in the bedroom but all through the

177house, where Aureliano Segundo’s rowdy friends were gathered. The war, relegated to the attic of

178bad memories, was momentarily recalled with the popping of champagne bottles.

179“To the health of the Pope,” Aureliano Segundo toasted.

180The guests toasted in a chorus. Then the man of the house played the accordion, fireworks were

181set off, and drums celebrated the event throughout the town. At dawn the guests, soaked in

182champagne, sacrificed six cows and put them in the street at the disposal of the crowd. No one was

183scandalized. Since Aureliano Segundo had taken charge of the house those festivities were a

184common thing, even when there was no motive as proper as the birth of a Pope. In a few years,

185without effort, simply by luck, he had accumulated one of the largest fortunes in the swamp thanks

186to the supernatural proliferation of his animals. His mares would bear triplets, his hens laid twice a

187day, and his hogs fattened with such speed that no one could explain such disorderly fecundity

188except through the use of black magic. “Save something now,” Ursula would tell her wild great-grandson. “This luck is not going to last all your life.” But Aureliano Segundo paid no attention to

189her. The more he opened champagne to soak his friends, the more wildly his animals gave birth and

190the more he was convinced that his lucky star was not a matter of his conduct but an influence of

191Petra Cotes, his concubine, whose love had the virtue of exasperating nature. So convinced was he

192that this was the origin of his fortune that he never kept Petra Cotes far away from his breeding

193grounds and even when he married and had children he continued living with her with the consent

194of Fernanda. Solid, monumental like his grandfathers, but with a joie de vivre and an irresistible

195good humor that they did not have, Aureliano Segundo scarcely had time to look after his animals.

196All he had to do was to take Petra Cores to his breeding grounds and have her ride across his land in

197order to have every animal marked with his brand succumb to the irremediable plague of

198proliferation.

199Like all the good things that occurred in his long life, that tremendous fortune had its origins in

200chance. Until the end of the wars Petra Cotes continued to support herself with the returns from her

201raffles and Aureliano Segundo was able to sack Ursula’s savings from time to time. They were a

202frivolous couple, with no other worries except going to bed every night, even on forbidden days,

203and frolicking there until dawn. “That woman has been your ruination,” Ursula would shout at her

204great-grandson when she saw him coming into the house like a sleepwalker. “She’s got you so

205bewitched that one of these days Pm going to see you twisting around with colic and with a toad in

206your belly.” Jose Arcadio Segundo, who took a long time to discover that he had been supplanted,

207was unable to understand his brother’s passion. He remembered Petra Cotes as an ordinary woman,

208rather lazy in bed, and completely lacking in any resources for lovemaking. Deaf to Ursula’s clamor

209and the teasing of his brother, Aureliano Segundo only thought at that time of finding a trade that

210would allow him to maintain a house for Petra Cotes, and to die with her, on top of her and under¬

211neath her, during a night of feverish license. When Colonel Aureliano Buendia opened up his

212workshop again, seduced at last by the peaceful charms of old age, Aureliano Segundo thought that

213it would be good business to devote himself to the manufacture of little gold fishes. He spent many

214hours in the hot room watching how the hard sheets of metal, worked by the colonel with the

215inconceivable patience of disillusionment, were slowly being converted into golden scales. The work

216seemed so laborious to him and the thought of Petra Cotes was so persistent and pressing that after

217three weeks he disappeared from the workshop. It was during that time that it occurred to Petra

218Cotes to raffle off rabbits. They reproduced and grew up so fast that there was barely time to sell the

219tickets for the raffle. At first Aureliano Segundo did not notice the alarming proportions of the

220proliferation. But one night, when nobody in town wanted to hear about the rabbit raffle any more,

221he heard a noise by the courtyard door. “Don’t get worried,” Petra, Cotes said. “It’s only the

222rabbits.” They could not sleep, tormented by the uproar of the animals. At dawn Aureliano Segundo

223opened the door and saw the courtyard paved with rabbits, blue in the glow of dawn. Petra Cotes,

224dying with laughter, could not resist the temptation of teasing him.

225“Those are the ones who were born last night,” she aid.

226“Oh my God!” he said. “Why don’t you raffle off cows?”

227A few days later, in an attempt to clean out her courtyard, Petra Cotes exchanged the rabbits for a

228cow, who two months later gave birth to triplets. That was how things began. Overnight Aureliano

229Segundo be. came the owner of land and livestock and he barely had time to enlarge his overflowing

230barns and pigpens. It was a delirious prosperity that even made him laugh, and he could not help

231doing crazy things to release his good humor. “Cease, cows, life is short,” he would shout. Ursula

232wondered what entanglements he had got into, whether he might be stealing, whether he had

233become a rustler, and every time she saw him uncorking champagne just for the pleasure of pouring

234the foam over his head, she would shout at him and scold him for the waste. It annoyed him so

235much that one day when he awoke in a merry mood, Aureliano Segundo appeared with a chest full

236of money, a can of paste, and a brush, and singing at the top of his lungs the old songs of Francisco

237the Man, he papered the house inside and out and from top to bottom, with one-peso banknotes.

238The old mansion, painted white since the time they had brought the pianola, took on the strange

239look of a mosque. In the midst of the excitement of the family the scandalization of Ursula, the joy

240of the people cramming the street to watch that apotheosis of squandering. Aureliano Segundo

241finished by papering the house from the front to the kitchen, including bathrooms and bedrooms,

242and threw the leftover bills into the courtyard.

243“Now,” he said in a final way, “I hope that nobody in this house ever talks to me about money

244again. ”

245That was what happened. Ursula had the bills taken down, stuck to great cakes of whitewash, and

246the house was painted white again. “Dear Lord,” she begged, “make us poor again the way we were

247when we founded this town so that you will not collect for this squandering in the other life.” Her

248prayers were answered in reverse. One of the workmen removing the bills bumped into an

249enormous plaster statue of Saint Joseph that someone had left in the house during the last years of

250the war and the hollow figure broke to pieces on the floor. It had been stuffed with gold coins. No

251one could remember who had brought that life-sized saint. “Three men brought it,” Amaranta

252explained. “They asked us to keep it until the rains were over and I told them to put it there in the

253comer where nobody would bump into it, and there they put it, very carefully, and there it’s been

254ever since because they never came back for it.” Later on, Ursula had put candles on it and had

255prostrated herself before it, not suspecting that instead of a saint she was adoring almost four

256bundled pounds of gold. The tardy evidence of her involuntary paganism made her even more

257upset. She spat on the spectacular pile of coins, put them in three canvas sacks, and buried them in a

258secret place, hoping that sooner or later the three unknown men would come to reclaim them. Much

259later, during the difficult years of her decrepitude, Ursula would intervene in the conversations of

260the many travelers who came by the house at that time and ask them if they had left a plaster Saint

261Joseph there during the war to be taken care of until the rains passed.

262Things like that which gave Ursula such consternation, were commonplace in those days.

263Macondo was swamped in a miraculous prosperity. The adobe houses of the founders had been

264replaced by brick buildings with wooden blinds and cement floors which made the suffocating heat

265of two o’clock in the afternoon more bearable. All that remained at that time of Jose Arcadio

266Buendfa’s ancient village were the dusty almond trees, destined to resist the most arduous of

267circumstances, and the river of clear water whose prehistoric stones had been pulverized by the

268frantic hammers of Jose Arcadio Segundo when he set about opening the channel in order to

269establish a boat line. It was a mad dream, comparable to those of his great-grandfather, for the rocky

270riverbed and the numerous rapids prevented navigation from Macondo to the sea. But Jose Arcadio

271Segundo, in an unforeseen burst of temerity, stubbornly kept on with the project. Until then he had

272shown no sign of imagination. Except for his precarious adventure with Petra Cotes, he had never

273known a woman. Ursula had considered him the quietest example the family had ever produced in

274all its history, incapable of standing out even as a handler of fighting cocks, when Colonel Aureliano

275Buendfa told him the story of the Spanish galleon aground eight miles from the sea, the carbonized

276frame of which he had seen himself during the war. The story, which for so many years had seemed

277fantastic to so many people, was a revelation for Jose Arcadio Segundo. He auctioned off his

278roosters to the highest bidder, recruited men, bought tools, and set about the awesome task of

279breaking stones, digging canals, clearing away rapids, and even harnessing waterfalls. “I know all of

280this by heart,” Ursula would shout. “It’s as if time had turned around and we were back at the

281beginning.” When he thought that the river was navigable, Jose Arcadio Segundo gave his brother a

282detailed account of his plans and the latter gave him the money he needed for the enterprise. He

283disappeared for a long time. It had been said that his plan to buy a boat was nothing but a trick to

284make off with his brother’s money when the news spread that a strange craft was approaching the

285town. The inhabitants of Macondo, who no longer remembered the colossal undertakings of Jose

286Arcadio Buendia, ran to the riverbank and saw with eyes popping in disbelief the arrival of the first

287and last boat ever to dock in the town. It was nothing but a log raft drawn by thick ropes pulled by

288twenty men who walked along the bank. In the prow, with a glow of satisfaction in his eyes, Jose

289Arcadio Segundo was directing the arduous maneuver. There arrived with him a rich group of

290splendid matrons who were protecting themselves from the burning sun with gaudy parasols, and

291wore on their shoulders fine silk kerchiefs, with colored creams on their faces and natural flowers in

292their hair and golden serpents on their arms and diamonds in their teeth. The log raft was the only

293vessel that Jose Arcadio Segundo was able to bring to Macondo, and only once, but he never

294recognized the failure of his enterprise, but proclaimed his deed as a victory of will power. He gave a

295scmpulous accounting to his brother and very soon plunged back into the routine of cockfights. The

296only tiling that remained of that unfortunate venture was the breath of renovation that the matrons

297from France brought, as their magnificent arts transformed traditional methods of love and their

298sense of social well-being abolished Catarino’s antiquated place and turned the street into a bazaar of

299Japanese lanterns and nostalgic hand organs. They were the promoters of the bloody carnival that

300plunged Macondo into delirium for three days and whose only lasting consequence was having given

301Aureliano Segundo the opportunity to meet Fernanda del Carpio.

302Remedios the Beauty was proclaimed queen. Ursula, who shuddered at the disquieted beauty of

303her great-granddaughter, could not prevent the choice. Until then she had succeeded in keeping her

304off the streets unless it was to go to mass with Amaranta, but she made her cover her face with a

305black shawl. The most impious men, those who would disguise themselves as priests to say

306sacrilegious masses in Catarino’s store, would go to church with an aim to see, if only for an instant,

307the face of Remedios the Beauty, whose legendary good looks were spoken of with alarming

308excitement throughout the swamp. It was a long time before they were able to do so, and it would

309have been better for them if they never had, because most of them never recovered their peaceful

310habits of sleep. The man who made it possible, a foreigner, lost his serenity forever, became

311involved in the sloughs of abjection and misery, and years later was cut to pieces by a train after he

312had fallen asleep on the tracks. From the moment he was seen in the church, wearing a green velvet

313suit and an embroidered vest, no one doubted that he came from far away, perhaps from some

314distant city outside of the country, attracted by the magical fascination of Remedios the Beauty. He

315was so handsome, so elegant and dignified, with such presence, that Pietro Crespi would have been

316a mere fop beside him and many women whispered with spiteful smiles that he was the one who

317really should have worn the shawl. He did not speak to anyone in Macondo. He appeared at dawn

318on Sunday like a prince in a fairy tale, riding a horse with silver stirmps and a velvet blanket, and he

319left town after mass.

320The power of his presence was such that from the first time he was seen in the church everybody

321took it for granted that a silent and tense duel had been established between him and Remedios the

322Beauty, a secret pact, an irrevocable challenge that would end not only in love but also in death. On

323the sixth Sunday the gentleman appeared with a yellow rose in his hand. He heard mass standing, as

324he always did, and at the end he stepped in front of Remedios the Beauty and offered her the

325solitary rose. She took it with a natural gesture, as if she had been prepared for that homage, and

326then she uncovered her face and gave her thanks with a smile. That was all she did. Not only for the

327gentleman, but for all the men who had the unfortunate privilege of seeing her, that was an eternal

328instant.

329From then on the gentleman had a band of musicians play beside the window of Remedios the

330Beauty, sometimes until dawn. Aureliano Segundo was the only one who felt a cordial compassion

331for him and he tried to break his perseverance. “Don’t waste your time any more,” he told him one

332night. “The women in this house are worse than mules.” He offered him his friendship, invited him

333to bathe in champagne, tried to make him understand that the females of his family had insides

334made of flint, but he could not weaken his obstinacy. Exasperated by the interminable nights of

335music. Colonel Aureliano Buendia threatened to cure his affliction with a few pistol shots. Nothing

336made him desist except his own lamentable state of demoralization. From a well-dressed and neat

337individual he became filthy and ragged. It was rumored that he had abandoned power and fortune in

338his distant nation, although his origins were actually never known. He became argumentative, a

339barroom brawler, and he would wake up rolling in his own filth in Catarino’s store. The saddest part

340of his drama was that Remedios the Beauty did not notice him not even when he appeared in church

341dressed like a prince. She accepted the yellow rose without the least bit of malice, amused, rather, by

342the extravagance of the act, and she lifted her shawl to see his face better, not to show hers.

343Actually, Remedios the Beauty was not a creature of this world. Until she was well along in

344puberty Santa Sofia de la. Piedad had to bathe and dress her, and even when she could take care of

345herself it was necessary to keep an eye on her so that she would not paint little animals on the walls

346with a stick daubed in her own excrement. She reached twenty without knowing how to read or

347write, unable to use the silver at the table, wandering naked through the house because her nature

348rejected all manner of convention. When the young commander of the guard declared his love for

349her, she rejected him simply because his frivolity startled her. “See how simple he is,” she told

350Amaranta. “He says that he’s dying because of me, as if I were a bad case of colic.” When, indeed,

351they found him dead beside her window, Remedios the Beauty confirmed her first impression.

352“You see,” she commented. “He was a complete Simpleton.”

353It seemed as if some penetrating lucidity permitted her to see the reality of things beyond any

354formalism. That at least was the point of view of Colonel Aureliano Buendia, for whom Remedios

355the Beauty was in no way mentally retarded, as was generally believed, but quite the opposite. “It’s as

356if she’s come back from twenty years of war,” he would say. Ursula, for her part, thanked God for

357having awarded the family with a creature of exceptional purity, but at the same time she was

358disturbed by her beauty, for it seemed a contradictory virtue to her, a diabolical trap at the center of

359her innocence. It was for that reason that she decided to keep her away from the world, to protect

360her from all earthly temptation, not knowing that Remedios the Beauty, even from the time when

361she was in her mother’s womb, was safe from any contagion. It never entered her head that they

362would elect her beauty queen of the carnival pandemonium. But Aureliano, Segundo, excited at the

363caprice of disguising himself as a tiger, brought Father Antonio Isabel to the house in order to

364convince Ursula that the carnival was not a pagan feast, as she said, but a Catholic tradition. Finally

365convinced, even though reluctantly, she consented to the coronation.

366The news that Remedios Buendia was going to be the sovereign mler of the festival went beyond

367the limits of the swamp in a few hours, reached distant places where the prestige of her beauty was

368not known, and it aroused the anxiety of those who still thought of her last name as a symbol of

369subversion. The anxiety was baseless. If anyone had become harmless at that time it was the aging

370and disillusioned Colonel Aureliano Buendia, who was slowly losing all contact with the reality of

371the nation. Enclosed in his workshop, his only relationship with the rest of the world was his

372business in little gold fishes. One of the soldiers who had guarded his house during the first days of

373peace would go sell them in the villages of the swamp and return loaded down with coins and news.

374That the Conservative government, he would say, with the backing of the Liberals, was reforming

375the calendar so that every president could remain in power for a hundred years. That the concordat

376with the Holy See had finally been signed and a cardinal had come from Rome with a crown of

377diamonds and a throne of solid gold, and that the Liberal ministers had had their pictures taken on

378their knees in the act of kissing his ring. That the leading lady of a Spanish company passing through

379the capital had been kidnapped by a band of masked highwaymen and on the following Sunday she

380had danced in the nude at the summer house of the president of the republic. “Don’t talk to me

381about politics,” the colonel would tell him. “Our business is selling little fishes.” The rumor that he

382did not want to hear anything about the situation in the country because he was growing rich in his

383workshop made Ursula laugh when it reached her ears. With her terrible practical sense she could

384not understand the colonel’s business as he exchanged little fishes for gold coins and then converted

385the coins into little fishes, and so on, with the result that he had to work all the harder with the more

386he sold in order to satisfy an exasperating vicious circle. Actually, what interested him was not the

387business but the work. He needed so much concentration to link scales, fit minute rubies into the

388eyes, laminate gills, and put on fins that there was not the smallest empty moment left for him to fill