1IN THE BEWILDERMENT of her last years, Ursula had had very little free time to attend to the papal

2education of Jose Arcadio, and the time came for him to get ready to leave for the seminary right

3away. Meme, his sister, dividing her time between Fernanda’s rigidity and Amaranta’s bitterness, at

4almost the same moment reached the age set for her to be sent to the nuns’ school, where they

5would make a virtuoso on the clavichord of her. Ursula felt tormented by grave doubts concerning

6the effectiveness of the methods with which she had molded the spirit of the languid apprentice

7Supreme Pontiff, but she did not put the blame on her staggering old age or the dark clouds that

8barely permitted her to make out the shape of things, but on something that she herself could not

9really define and that she conceived confusedly as a progressive breakdown of time. “The years

10nowadays don’t pass the way the old ones used to,” she would say, feeling that everyday reality was

11slipping through her hands. In the past, she thought, children took a long time to grow up. All one

12had to do was remember all the time needed for Jose Arcadio, the elder, to go away with the gypsies

13and all that happened before he came back painted like a snake and talking like an astronomer, and

14the things that happened in the house before Amaranta and Arcadio forgot the language of the

15Indians and learned Spanish. One had to see only the days of sun and dew that poor Jose Arcadio

16Buendia went through under the chestnut tree and all the time weeded to mourn his death before

17they brought in a dying Colonel Aureliano Buendia, who after so much war and so much suffering

18from it was still not fifty years of age. In other times, after spending the whole day making candy

19animals, she had more than enough time for the children, to see from the whites of their eyes that

20they needed a dose of castor oil. Now, however, when she had nothing to do and would go about

21with Jose Arcadio riding on her hip from dawn to dusk, this bad kind of time compelled her to leave

22things half done. The truth was that Ursula resisted growing old even when she had already lost

23count of her age and she was a bother on all sides as she tried to meddle in everything and as she

24annoyed strangers with her questions as to whether they had left a plaster Saint Joseph to be kept

25until the rains were over during the days of the war. No one knew exactly when she had begun to

26lose her sight. Even in her later years, when she could no longer get out of bed, it seemed that she

27was simply defeated by decrepitude, but no one discovered that she was blind. She had noticed it

28before the birth of Jose Arcadio. At first she thought it was a matter of a passing debility and she

29secretly took marrow syrup and put honey on her eyes, but quite soon she began to realize that she

30was irrevocably sinking into the darkness, to a point where she never had a clear notion of the

31invention of the electric light, for when they put in the first bulbs she was only able to perceive the

32glow. She did not tell anyone about it because it would have been a public recognition of her

33uselessness. She concentrated on a silent schooling in the distances of tilings and peoples voices, so

34that she would still be able to see with her memory what the shadows of her cataracts no longer

35allowed her to. Later on she was to discover the unforeseen help of odors, which were defined in

36the shadows with a strength that was much more convincing than that of bulk and color, and which

37saved her finally from the shame of admitting defeat. In the darkness of the room she was able to

38thread a needle and sew a buttonhole and she knew when the milk was about to boil. She knew with

39so much certainty the location of everything that she herself forgot that she was blind at times. On

40one occasion Fernanda had the whole house upset because she had lost her wedding ring, and

41Ursula found it on a shelf in the children’s bedroom. Quite simply, while the others were going

42carelessly all about, she watched them with her four senses so that they never took her by surprise,

43and after some time she discovered that every member of the family, without realizing it, repeated

44the same path every day, the same actions, and almost repeated the same words at the same hour.

45Only when they deviated from meticulous routine did they run the risk of losing something. So

46when she heard Fernanda all upset be cause she had lost her ring, Ursula remembered that the only

47thing different that she had done that day was to put the mattresses out in the sun because Meme

48had found a bedbug the might before. Since the children had been present at the fumigation, Ursula

49figured that Fernanda had put the ring in the only place where they could not reach it: the shelf.

50Fernanda, on the other hand, looked for it in vain along the paths of her everyday itinerary without

51knowing that the search for lost tilings is hindered by routine habits and that is why it is so difficult

52to find them.

53The rearing of Jose Arcadio helped Ursula in the exhausting task of keeping herself up to date on

54the smallest changes in the house. When she realized that Amaranta was dressing the saints in the

55bedroom she pretended to show the boy the differences in the colors.

56“Let’s see,” she would tell him. “Tell me what color the Archangel Raphael is wearing.”

57In that way the child gave her the information that was denied her by her eyes, and long before

58he went away to the seminary Ursula could already distinguish the different colors of the saints’

59clothing by the texture. Sometimes unforeseen accidents would happen. One afternoon when

60Amaranta was ‘embroidering on the porch with the begonias Ursula bumped into her.

61“For heaven’s sake,” Amaranta protested, “watch where you’re going.”

62“It’s your fault,” Ursula said. “You’re not sitting where you’re supposed to.”

63She was sure of it. But that day she began to realize something that no one had noticed and it was

64that with the passage of the year the sun imperceptibly changed position and those who sat on the

65porch had to change their position little by little without being aware of it. From then on Ursula had

66only to remember the date in order to know exactly where Amaranta was sitting. Even though the

67trembling of her hands was more and more noticeable and the weight of her feet was too much for

68her, her small figure was never seen in so many places at the same time. She was almost as diligent as

69when she had the whole weight of the house on her shoulders. Nevertheless, in the impenetrable

70solitude of decrepitude she had such clairvoyance as she examined the most insignificant happenings

71in the family that for the first time she saw clearly the truths that her busy life in former times had

72prevented her from seeing. Around the time they were preparing Jose Arcadio for the seminary she

73had already made a detailed recapitulation of life in the house since the founding of Macondo and

74had completely changed the opinion that she had always held of her descendants. She realized that

75Colonel Aureliano Buendia had not lost his love for the family because he had been hardened by the

76war, as she had thought before, but that he had never loved anyone, not even his wife Remedios or

77the countless one-night women who had passed through his life, and much less his sons. She sensed

78that he had fought so many wars not out of idealism, as everyone had thought, nor had he

79renounced a certain victory because of fatigue, as everyone had thought, but that he had won and

80lost for the same reason, pure and sinful pride. She reached the conclusion that the son for whom

81she would have given her life was simply a man incapable of love. One night when she was carrying

82him in her belly she heard him weeping. It was such a definite lament that Jose Arcadio Buendia

83woke up beside her and was happy with the idea that his son was going to be a ventriloquist. Other

84people predicted that he would be a prophet. She, on the other hand, shuddered from the certainty

85that the deep moan was a first indication of the fearful pig tail and she begged God to let the child

86die in her womb. But the lucidity of her old age allowed her to see, and she said so many times, that

87the cries of children in their mothers’ wombs are not announcements of ventriloquism or a faculty

88for prophecy but an unmistakable sign of an incapacity for love. The lowering of the image of her

89son brought out in her all at once all the compassion that she owed him. Amaranta, however, whose

90hardness of heart frightened her, whose concentrated bitterness made her bitter, suddenly became

91clear to her in the final analysis as the most tender woman who had ever existed, and she understood

92with pitying clarity that the unjust tortures to which she had submitted Pietro Crespi had not been

93dictated by a desire for vengeance, as everyone had thought, nor had the slow martyrdom with

94which she had frustrated the life of Colonel Gerineldo Marquez been determined by the gall of her

95bitterness, as everyone had thought, but that both actions had been a mortal struggle between a

96measureless love and an invincible cowardice, and that the irrational fear that Amaranta had always

97had of her own tormented heart had triumphed in the end. It was during that time that Ursula,

98began to speak Rebeca’s name, bringing back the memory of her with an old love that was exalted

99by tardy repentance and a sudden admiration, coming to understand that only she, Rebeca, the one

100who had never fed of her milk but only of the earth of the land and the whiteness of the walls, the

101one who did not carry the blood of her veins in hers but the unknown blood of the strangers whose

102bones were still c/odng in their grave. Rebeca, the one with an impatient heart, the one with a fierce

103womb, was the only one who bad the unbridled courage that Ursula had wanted for her line.

104“Rebeca,” she would say, feeling along the walls, “how unfair we’ve been to you!”

105In the house they simply thought that her mind was wandering, especially since the time she had

106begun walking about with her right arm raised like the Archangel Gabriel. Fernanda, however,

107realized that there was a sun of clairvoyance in the shadows of that wandering, for Ursula could say

108without hesitation how much money had been spent in the house during the previous year.

109Amaranta had a similar idea one day as her mother was stirring a pot of soup in the kitchen and said

110all at once without knowing that they were listening to her that the corn grinder they had bought

111from the first gypsies and that had disappeared during the time before Jose Arcadio, had taken his

112sixty-five trips around the world was still in Pilar Ternera’s house. Also almost a hundred years old,

113but fit and agile in spite of her inconceivable fatness, which frightened children as her laughter had

114frightened the doves in other times. Pilar Ternera was not surprised that Ursula was correct because

115her own experience was beginning to tell her that an alert old age can be more keen than the cards.

116Nevertheless, when Ursula realized that she had not had enough time to consolidate the vocation

117of Jose Arcadio, she let herself be disturbed by consternation. She began to make mistakes, trying to

118see with her eyes the tilings that intuition allowed her to see with greater clarity. One morning she

119poured the contents of an inkwell over the boy’s head thinking that it was rose water. She stumbled

120so much in her insistence in taking part in everything that she felt herself upset by gusts of bad

121humor and she tried to get rid of the shadows that were beginning to wrap her in a straitjacket of

122cobwebs. It was then that it occurred to her that her clumsiness was not the first victory of

123decrepitude and darkness but a sentence passed by time. She thought that previously, when God did

124not make the same traps out of the months and years that the Turks used when they measured a

125yard of percale, things were different. Now children not only grew faster, but even feelings

126developed in a different way. No sooner had Remedios the Beauty ascended to heaven in body and

127soul than the inconsiderate Fernanda was going about mumbling to herself because her sheets had

128been carried off. The bodies of the Aurelianos were no sooner cold in their graves than Aureliano

129Segundo had the house lighted up again, filled with drunkards playing the accordion and dousing

130themselves in champagne, as if dogs and not Christians had died, and as if that madhouse which had

131cost her so many headaches and so many candy animals was destined to become a trash heap of

132perdition. Remembering those tilings as she prepared Jose Arcadio’s trunk, Ursula wondered if it

133was not preferable to lie down once and for all in her grave and let them throw the earth over her,

134and she asked God, without fear, if he really believed that people were made of iron in order to bear

135so many troubles and mortifications, and asking over and over she was stirring up her own

136confusion and she felt irrepressible desires to let herself go and scamper about like a foreigner and

137allow herself at last an instant of rebellion, that instant yearned for so many times and so many times

138postponed, putting her resignation aside and shitting on everything once and for all and drawing out

139of her heart the infinite stacks of bad words that she had been forced to swallow over a century of

140conformity.

141“Shit!” she shouted.

142Amaranta, who was starting to put the clothes into the trunk, thought that she had been bitten by

143a scorpion.

144“Where is it?” she asked in alarm.

145“What?”

146“The bug!” Amaranta said.

147Ursula put a finger on her heart.

148“Here,” she said.

149On Thursday, at two in the afternoon, Jose Arcadio left for the seminary. ‘Ursula would

150remember him always as she said good-bye to him, languid and serious, without shedding a tear, as

151she had taught him, sweltering in the heat in the green corduroy suit with copper buttons and a

152starched bow around his neck. He left the dining room impregnated with the penetrating fragrance

153of rose water that she had sprinkled on his head so that she could follow his tracks through the

154house. While the farewell lunch was going on, the family concealed its nervousness with festive

155expressions and they celebrated with exaggerated enthusiasm the remarks that Father Antonio Isabel

156made. But when they took out the trunk bound in velvet and with silver corners, it was as if they had

157taken a coffin out of the house. The only one who refused to take part in the farewell was Colonel

158Aureliano Buendia.

159“That’s all we need,” he muttered. “A Pope!”

160Three months later Aureliano Segundo and Fernanda took Meme to school and came back with a

161clavichord, which took the place of the pianola. It was around that time that Amaranta started

162sewing her own shroud. The banana fever had calmed down. The old inhabitants of Macondo found

163themselves surrounded by newcomers and working hard to cling to their precarious resources of

164times gone by, but comforted in any case by the sense that they had survived a shipwreck. In the

165house they still had guests for lunch and the old routine was never really set up again until the

166banana company left years later. Nevertheless, there were radical changes in the traditional sense of

167hospitality because at that time it was Fernanda who imposed her rules. With Ursula relegated to the

168shadows and with Amaranta absorbed In the work of her winding cloth, the former apprentice

169queen had the freedom to choose the guests and impose on them the rigid norms that her parents

170had taught her. Her severity made the house a redoubt of old customs in a town convulsed by the

171vulgarity with which the outsiders squandered their easy fortunes. For her, with no further questions

172asked, proper people were those who had nothing to do with the banana company. Even Jose

173Arcadio Segundo, her brother-in-law, was the victim of her discriminatory jealousy because during

174the excitement of the first days he gave up his stupendous fighting cocks again and took a job as

175foreman with the banana company.

176“He won’t ever come into this house again,” Fernanda said, “as long as he carries the rash of the

177foreigners. ”

178Such was the narrowness imposed in the house that Aureliano Segundo felt more comfortable at

179Petra Cotes’s. First, with the pretext of taking the burden off his wife, he transferred his parties.

180Then, with the pretext that the animals were losing their fertility, he transferred his barns and

181stables. Finally, with the pretext that it was cooler in his concubine’s house, he transferred the small

182office in which he handled his business. When Fernanda realized that she was a widow whose

183husband had still not died, it was already too late for things to return to their former state. Aureliano

184Segundo barely ate at home and the only appearances he put in, such as to sleep with his wife, were

185not enough to convince anyone. One night, out of carelessness, morning found him in Petra Cotes’s

186bed. Fernanda, contrary to expectations, did not reproach him in the least or give the slightest sigh

187of resentment, but on the same day she sent two trunks with his clothing to the house of his

188concubine. She sent them in broad daylight and with instructions that they be carried through the

189middle of the street so that everyone could see them, thinking that her straying husband would be

190unable to bear the shame and would return to the fold with his head hung low. But that heroic

191gesture was just one more proof of how poorly Fernanda knew not only the character of her

192husband but the character of a community that had nothing to do with that of her parents, for

193everyone who saw the trunks pass by said that it was the natural culmination of a story whose

194intimacies were known to everyone, and Aureliano Segundo celebrated the freedom he had received

195with a party that lasted for three days. To the greater disadvantage of his wife, as she was entering

196into a sad maturity with her somber long dresses, her old-fashioned medals, and her out-of-place

197pride, the concubine seemed to be bursting with a second youth, clothed in gaudy dresses of natural

198silk and with her eyes tiger-striped with a glow of vindication. Aureliano Segundo gave himself over

199to her again with the fury of adolescence, as before, when Petra Cotes had not loved him for himself

200but because she had him mixed up with his twin brother and as she slept with both of them at the

201same time she thought that God had given her the good fortune of having a man who could make

202love like two. The restored passion was so pressing that on more than one occasion they would look

203each other in the eyes as they were getting ready to eat and without saying anything they would

204cover their plates and go into the bedroom dying of hunger and of love. Inspired by the things he

205had seen on his furtive visits to the French matrons, Aureliano Segundo bought Petra Cotes a bed

206with an archiepiscopal canopy, put velvet curtains on the windows, and covered the ceiling and the

207walls of the bedroom with large rock-crystal mirrors. At the same time he was more of a carouser

208and spendthrift than ever. On the train, which arrived every day at eleven o’clock, he would receive

209cases and more cases of champagne and brandy. On the way back from the station he would drag

210the improvised cumbiamba along in full view of all the people on the way, natives or outsiders,

211acquaintances or people yet to be known, without distinctions of any kind. Even the slippery Mr.

212Brown, who talked only in a strange tongue, let himself be seduced by the tempting signs that

213Aureliano Segundo made him and several times he got dead dmnk in Petra Cotes’s house and he

214even made the fierce German shepherd dogs that went everywhere with him dance to some Texas

215songs that he himself mumbled in one way or another to the accompaniment of the accordion.

216“Cease, cows,” Aureliano Segundo shouted at the height of the party. “Cease, because life is

217short. ”

218He never looked better, nor had he been loved more, nor had the breeding of his animals been

219wilder. There was a slaughtering of so many cows, pigs, and chickens for the endless parties that the

220ground in the courtyard turned black and muddy with so much blood. It was an eternal execution

221ground of bones and innards, a mud pit of leftovers, and they had to keep exploding dynamite

222bombs all the time so that the buzzards would not pluck out the guests’ eyes. Aureliano Segundo

223grew fat, purple-colored, turtle-shaped, because of an appetite comparable only to that of Jose

224Arcadio when he came back from traveling around the world. The prestige of his outlandish

225voracity, of his immense capacity as a spendthrift, of his unprecedented hospitality went beyond the

226borders of the swamp and attracted the best-qualified gluttons from all along the coast. Fabulous

227eaters arrived from everywhere to take part in the irrational tourneys of capacity and resistance that

228were organized in the house of Petra Cotes. Aureliano Segundo was the unconquered eater until the

229luckless Saturday when Camila Sagastume appeared, a totemic female known all through the land by

230the good name of “The Elephant.” The duel lasted until dawn on Tuesday. During the first twenty-

231four hours, having dispatched a dinner of veal, with cassava, yams, and fried bananas, and a case and

232a half of champagne in addition, Aureliano Segundo was sure of victory. He seemed more

233enthusiastic, more vital than his imperturbable adversary, who possessed a style that was obviously

234more professional, but at the same time less emotional for the large crowd that filled the house.

235While Aureliano Segundo ate with great bites, overcome by the anxiety of victory, The Elephant was

236slicing her meat with the art of a surgeon and eating it unhurriedly and even with a certain pleasure.

237She was gigantic and sturdy, but over her colossal form a tenderness of femininity prevailed and she

238had a face that was so beautiful, hands so fine and well cared for, and such an irresistible personal

239charm that when Aureliano Segundo saw her enter the house he commented in a low voice that he

240would have preferred to have the tourney in bed and not at the table. Later on, when he saw her

241consume a side of veal without breaking a single rule of good table manners, he commented

242seriously that that delicate, fascinating, and insatiable proboscidian was in a certain way the ideal

243woman. He was not mistaken. The reputation of a bone crusher that had preceded The Elephant

244had no basis. She was not a beef cruncher or a bearded lady from a Greek circus, as had been said,

245but the director of a school of voice. She had learned to eat when she was already the respectable

246mother of a family, looking for a way for her children to eat better and not by means of any artificial

247stimulation of their appetites but through the absolute tranquility of their spirits. Her theory,

248demonstrated in practice, was based on the principle that a person who had all matters of conscience

249in perfect shape should be able to eat until overcome by fatigue. And it was for moral reasons and

250sporting interest that she left her school and her home to compete with a man whose fame as a

251great, unprincipled eater had spread throughout the country. From the first moment she saw him

252she saw that Aureliano Segundo would lose not his stomach but Iris character. At the end of the first

253night, while The Elephant was boldly going on, Aureliano Segundo was wearing himself out with a

254great deal of talking and laughing. They slept four hours. On awakening each one had the juice of

255forty oranges, eight quarts of coffee, and thirty raw eggs. On the second morning, after many hours

256without sleep and having put away two pigs, a bunch of bananas, and four cases of champagne, The

257Elephant suspected that Aureliano Segundo had unknowingly discovered the same method as hers,

258but by the absurd route of total irresponsibility. He was, therefore, more dangerous than she had

259thought. Nevertheless, when Petra Cotes brought two roast turkeys to the table, Aureliano Segundo

260was a step away from being stuffed.

261“If you can’t, don’t eat any more,” The Elephant said to him. “Let’s call it a tie.”

262She said it from her heart, understanding that she could not eat another mouthful either, out of

263remorse for bringing on the death of her adversary. But Aureliano Segundo interpreted it as another

264challenge and he filled himself with turkey beyond his incredible capacity. He lost consciousness. He

265fell face down into the plate filled with bones, frothing at the mouth like a dog, and drowning in

266moans of agony. He felt, in the midst of the darkness, that they were throwing him from the top of a

267tower into a bottomless pit and in a last flash of consciousness he realized that at the end of that

268endless fall death was waiting for him.

269“Take me to Fernanda,” he managed to say.

270His friends left him at the house thinking that they had helped him fulfill his promise to his wife

271not to die in his concubine’s bed. Petra Cotes had shined his patent leather boots that he wanted to

272wear in his coffin, and she was already looking for someone to take them when they came to tell her

273that Aureliano Segundo was out of danger. He did recover, indeed, in less than a week, and two

274weeks later he was celebrating the fact of his survival with unprecedented festivities. He continued

275living at Petra Cotes’s but he would visit Fernanda every day and sometimes he would stay to eat

276with the family, as if fate had reversed the situation and had made him the husband of his concubine

277and the lover of his wife.

278It was a rest for Fernanda. During the boredom of her abandonment her only distractions were

279the clavichord lessons at siesta time and the letters from her children. In the detailed messages that

280she sent them every two weeks there was not a single line of truth. She hid her troubles from them.

281She hid from them the sadness of a house which, in spite of the light on the begonias, in spite of the

282heaviness at two in the afternoon, in spite of the frequent waves of festivals that came in from the

283street was more and more like the colonial mansion of her parents. Fernanda would wander alone

284among the three living ghosts and the dead ghost of Jose Arcadio Buendia, who at times would

285come to sit down with an inquisitive attention in the half-light of the parlor while she was playing

286the clavichord. Colonel Aureliano Buendia was a shadow. Since the last time that he had gone out

287into the street to propose a war without any future to Colonel Gerineldo Marquez, he left the

288workshop only to urinate under the chestnut tree. He did not receive any visits except that of the

289barber every three weeks, He fed on anything that Ursula brought him once a day, and even though

290he kept on making little gold fishes with the same passion as before, he stopped selling them when

291he found out that people were buying them not as pieces of jewelry but as historic relics. He made a

292bonfire in the courtyard of the dolls of Remedios which had decorated, their bedroom since their

293wedding. The watchful Ursula realized what her son was doing but she could not stop him.

294“You have a heart of stone,” she told him.

295“It’s not a question of a heart,” he said. “The room’s getting full of moths.”

296Amaranta was weaving her shroud. Fernanda did not understand why she would write occasional

297letters to Meme and even send her gifts and on the other hand did not even want to hear about Jose

298Arcadio. “They’ll die without knowing why,” Amaranta answered when she was asked through

299Ursula, and that answer planted an enigma in Fernanda’s heart that she was never able to clarify.

300Tall, broad-shouldered, proud, always dressed in abundant petticoats with the lace and in air of

301distinction that resisted the years and bad memories, Amaranta seemed to carry the cross of ashes of

302virginity on her forehead. In reality she carried it on her hand in the black bandage, which she did

303not take off even to sleep and which she washed and ironed herself. Her life was spent in weaving

304her shroud. It might have been said that she wove during the day and unwove during the night, and

305not with any hope of defeating solitude in that way, but, quite the contrary, in order to nurture it.

306The greatest worry that Fernanda had during her years of abandonment was that Meme would

307come to spend her first vacation and not find Aureliano Segundo at home. His congestion had put

308an end to that fear. When Meme returned, her parents had made an agreement that not only would

309the girl think that Aureliano Segundo was still a domesticated husband but also that she would not

310notice the sadness of the house. Every year for two months Aureliano Segundo played his role of an

311exemplary husband and he organized parties with ice cream and cookies which the gay and lively

312schoolgirl enhanced with the clavichord. It was obvious from then on that she had inherited very

313little of her mother’s character. She seemed more of a second version of Amaranta when the latter

314had not known bitterness and was arousing the house with her dance steps at the age of twelve or

315fourteen before her secret passion for Pietro Crespi was to twist the direction of her heart in the

316end. But unlike Amaranta, unlike all of them, Meme still did not reveal the solitary fate of the family

317and she seemed entirely in conformity with the world, even when she would shut herself up in the

318parlor at two in the afternoon to practice the clavichord with an inflexible discipline. It was obvious

319that she liked the house, that she spent the whole year dreaming about the excitement of the young

320people her arrival brought around, and that she was not far removed from the festive vocation and

321hospitable excesses of her father. The first sign of that calamitous inheritance was revealed on her

322third vacation, when Meme appeared at the house with four nuns and sixty-eight classmates whom

323she had invited to spend a week with her family on her own Initiative and without any previous

324warning.

325“How awful!” Fernanda lamented. “This child is as much of a barbarian as her father!”

326It was necessary to borrow beds and hammocks from the neighbors, to set up nine shifts at the

327table, to fix hours for bathing, and to borrow forty stools so that the girls in blue uniforms with

328masculine buttons would not spend the whole day running from one place to another. The visit was

329a failure because the noisy schoolgirls would scarcely finish breakfast before they had to start taking

330turns for lunch and then for dinner, and for the whole week they were able to take only one walk

331through the plantations. At nightfall the nuns were exhausted, unable to move, give another order,

332and still the troop of tireless adolescents was in the courtyard singing school songs out of tune. One

333day they were on the point of trampling Ursula, who made an effort to be useful precisely where she

334was most in the way. On another day the nuns got all excited because Colonel Aureliano Buendia

335had urinated under the chestnut tree without being concerned that the schoolgirls were in the

336courtyard. Amaranta was on the point of causing panic because one of the nuns went into the

337kitchen as she was salting the soup and the only thing that occurred to her to say was to ask what

338those handfuls of white powder were.

339“Arsenic,” Amaranta answered.

340The night of their arrival the students carried on in such a way, trying to go to the bathroom

341before they went to bed, that at one o’clock in the morning the last ones were still going in.

342Fernanda then bought seventy-two chamberpots but she only managed to change the nocturnal

343problem into a morning one, because from dawn on there was a long line of girls, each with her pot

344in her hand, waiting for her turn to wash it. Although some of them suffered fevers and several of

345them were infected by mosquito bites, most of them showed an unbreakable resistance as they faced

346the most troublesome difficulties, and even at the time of the greatest heat they would scamper

347through the garden. When they finally left, the flowers were destroyed, the furniture broken, and the

348walls covered with drawings and writing, but Fernanda pardoned them for all of the damage because

349of her relief at their leaving. She returned the borrowed beds and stools and kept the seventy-two

350chamberpots in Melquiades’ room. The locked room, about which the spiritual life of the house

351revolved in former times, was known from that time on as the “chamberpot room.” For Colonel

352Aureliano Buendia it was the most appropriate name, because while the rest of the family was still

353amazed by the fact that Melquiades’ room was immune to dust and destruction, he saw it turned

354into a dunghill. In any case, it did not seem to bother him who was correct, and if he found out

355about the fate of the room it was because Fernanda kept passing by and disturbing his work for a

356whole afternoon as she put away the chamberpots.

357During those days Jose Arcadio Segundo reappeared in the house. He went along the porch

358without greeting anyone and he shut himself up in the workshop to talk to the colonel. In spite of

359the fact that she could not see him, Ursula analyzed the clicking of his foreman’s boots and was

360surprised at the unbridgeable distance that separated him from the family, even from the twin

361brother with whom he had played ingenious games of confusion in childhood and with whom he no

362longer had any traits in common. He was linear, solemn, and had a pensive air and the sadness of a

363Saracen and a mournful glow on his face that was the color of autumn. He was the one who most

364resembled his mother, Santa Sofia de la Piedad. Ursula reproached herself for the habit of forgetting

365about him when she spoke about the family, but when she sensed him in the house again and

366noticed that the colonel let him into the workshop during working hours, she reexamined her old

367memories and confirmed the belief that at some moment in childhood he had changed places with

368his twin brother, because it was he and not the other one who should have been called Aureliano.

369No one knew the details of his life. At one time it was discovered that he had no fixed abode, that

370he raised fighting cocks at Pilar Ternera’s house and that sometimes he would stay there to sleep but

371that he almost always spent the night in the rooms of the French matrons. He drifted about, with no

372ties of affection, with no ambitions, like a wandering star in Ursula’s planetary system.

373In reality, Jose Arcadio Segundo was not a member of the family, nor would he ever be of any

374other since that distant dawn when Colonel Gerineldo Marquez took him to the barracks, not so

375that he could see an execution, but so that for the rest of his life he would never forget the sad and

376somewhat mocking smile of the man being shot. That was not only his oldest memory, but the only

377one he had of his childhood. The other one, that of an old man with an old-fashioned vest and a hat

378with a brim like a crow’s wings who told him marvelous things framed in a dazzling window, he was

379unable to place in any period. It was an uncertain memory, entirely devoid of lessons or nostalgia,

380the opposite of the memory of the executed man, which had really set the direction of Iris life and

381would return to his memory clearer and dearer as he grew older, as if the passage of time were

382bringing him closer to it. Ursula tried to use Jose Arcadio Segundo to get Colonel Aureliano

383Buendia. to give up his imprisonment. “Get him to go to the movies,” she said to him. “Even if he

384doesn’t like the picture, as least he’ll breathe a little fresh air.” But it did not take her long to realize

385that he was as insensible to her begging as the colonel would have been, and that they were armored