1THE EVENTS that would deal Macondo its fatal blow were just showing themselves when they

2brought Meme Buendia’s son home. The public situation was so uncertain then that no one had

3sufficient spirit to become involved with private scandals, so that Fernanda was able to count on an

4atmosphere that enabled her to keep the child hidden as if he had never existed. She had to take him

5in because the circumstances under which they brought him made rejection impossible. She had to

6tolerate him against her will for the rest of her life because at the moment of truth she lacked the

7courage to go through with her inner determination to drown him in the bathroom cistern. She

8locked him up in Colonel Aureliano Buendia’s old workshop. She succeeded in convincing Santa

9Sofia de la Piedad that she had found him floating in a basket. Ursula would die without ever

10knowing his origin. Little Amaranta Ursula, who went into the workshop once when Fernanda was

11feeding the child, also believed the version of the floating basket. Aureliano Segundo, having broken

12finally with his wife because of the irrational way in which she handled Meme’s tragedy, did not

13know of the existence of his grandson until three years after they brought him home, when the child

14escaped from captivity through an oversight on Fernanda’s part and appeared on the porch for a

15fraction of a second, naked, with matted hair, and with an impressive sex organ that was like a

16turkey’s wattles, as if he were not a human child but the encyclopedia definition of a cannibal.

17Fernanda had not counted on that nasty trick of her incorrigible fate. The child was like the

18return of a shame that she had thought exiled by her from the house forever. As soon as they carried

19off Mauricio Babilonia with his shattered spinal column, Fernanda had worked out the most minute

20details of a plan destined to wipe out all traces of the burden. Without consulting her husband, she

21packed her bags, put the three changes of clothing that her daughter would need into a small

22suitcase, and went to get her in her bedroom a half hour before the train arrived.

23“Let’s go, Renata,” she told her.

24She gave no explanation. Meme, for her part, did not expect or want any. She not only did not

25know where they were going, but it would have been the same to her if they had been taking her to

26the slaughterhouse. She had not spoken again nor would she do so for the rest of her life from the

27time that she heard the shot in the backyard and the simultaneous cry of pain from Mauricio

28Babilonia. When her mother ordered her out of the bedroom she did not comb her hair or wash her

29face and she got into the train as if she were walking in her sleep, not even noticing the yellow

30butterflies that were still accompanying her. Fernanda never found out nor did she take the trouble

31to, whether that stony silence was a determination of her will or whether she had become mute

32because of the impact of the tragedy. Meme barely took notice of the journey through the formerly

33enchanted region. She did not see the shady, endless banana groves on both sides of the tracks. She

34did not see the white houses of the gringos or their gardens, dried out by dust and heat, or the

35women in shorts and blue-striped shirts playing cards on the terraces. She did not see the oxcarts on

36the dusty roads loaded down with bunches of bananas. She did not see the girls diving into the

37transparent rivers like tarpons, leaving the passengers on the train with the bitterness of their

38splendid breasts, or the miserable huts of the workers all huddled together where Mauricio Babilo-

39nia’s yellow butterflies fluttered about and in the doorways of which there were green and squalid

40children sitting on their pots, and pregnant women who shouted insults at the train. That fleeting

41vision, which had been a celebration for her when she came home from school, passed through

42Meme’s heart without a quiver. She did not look out of the window, not even when the burning

43dampness of the groves ended and the train went through a poppy-laden plain where the carbonized skeleton of the Spanish galleon still sat and then came out into the dear air alongside the frothy, dirty

44sea where almost a century before Jose Arcadio Buendia’s illusions had met defeat.

45At five o’clock in the afternoon, when they had come to the last station in the swamp, she got

46out of the train because Fernanda made her. They got into a small carriage that looked like an

47enormous bat, drawn by an asthmatic horse, and they went through the desolate city in the endless

48streets of which, split by saltiness, there was the sound of a piano lesson just like the one that

49Fernanda heard during the siestas of her adolescence. They went on board a riverboat, the wooden

50wheel of which had a sound of conflagration, and whose msted metal plates reverberated like the

51mouth of an oven. Meme shut herself up in her cabin. Twice a day Fernanda left a plate of food by

52her bed and twice a day she took it away intact, not because Meme had resolved to die of hunger,

53but because even the smell of food was repugnant to her and her stomach rejected even water. Not

54even she herself knew that her fertility had outwitted the mustard vapors, just as Fernanda did not

55know until almost a year later, when they brought the child. In the suffocating cabin, maddened by

56the vibration of the metal plates and the unbearable stench of the mud stirred up by the paddle

57wheel, Meme lost track of the days. Much time had passed when she saw the last yellow butterfly

58destroyed in the blades of the fan and she admitted as an irremediable tmth that Mauricio Babilonia

59had died. She did not let herself be defeated by resignation, however. She kept on thinking about

60him during the arduous muleback crossing of the hallucinating plateau where Aureliano Segundo

61had become lost when he was looking for the most beautiful woman who had ever appeared on the

62face of the earth, and when they went over the mountains along Indian trails and entered the gloomy

63city in whose stone alleys the funereal bronze bells of thirty-two churches tolled. That night they

64slept in the abandoned colonial mansion on boards that Fernanda laid on the floor of a room

65invaded by weeds, wrapped in the shreds of curtains that they pulled off the windows and that fell to

66pieces with every turn of the body. Meme knew where they were because in the flight of her

67insomnia she saw pass by the gentleman dressed in black whom they delivered to the house inside a

68lead box on one distant Christmas Eve. On the following day, after mass, Fernanda took her to a

69somber building that Meme recognized immediately from her mother’s stories of the convent where

70they had raised her to be a queen, and then she understood that they had come to the end of the

71journey. While Fernanda was speaking to someone in the office next door, Meme remained in a

72parlor checkered with large oil paintings of colonial archbishops, still wearing an etamine dress with

73small black flowers and stiff high shoes which were swollen by the cold of the uplands. She was

74standing in the center of the parlor thinking about Mauricio Babilonia under the yellow stream of

75light from the stained glass windows when a very beautiful novice came out of the office carrying

76her suitcase with the three changes of clothing. As she passed Meme she took her hand without

77stopping.

78“Come, Renata,” she said to her.

79Meme took her hand and let herself be led. The last time that Fernanda saw her, trying to keep

80up with the novice, the iron grating of the cloister had just closed behind her. She was still thinking

81about Mauricio Babilonia, his smell of grease, and his halo of butterflies, and she would keep on

82thinking about him for all the days of her life until the remote autumn morning when she died of old

83age, with her name changed and her head shaved and without ever having spoken a word, in a

84gloomy hospital in Cracow.

85Fernanda returned to Macondo on a train protected by armed police. During the trip she noticed

86the tension of the passengers, the military preparations in the towns along the line, and an

87atmosphere rarified by the certainty that something serious was going to happen, but she had no

88information until she reached Macondo and they told her that Jose Arcadio Segundo was inciting

89the workers of the banana company to strike. “That’s all we need,” Fernanda said to herself. “An

90anarchist in the family.” The strike broke out two weeks later and it did not have the dramatic consequences that had been feared. The workers demanded that they not be obliged to cut and load

91bananas on Sundays, and the position seemed so just that even Father Antonio Isabel interceded in

92its favor because he found it in accordance with the laws of God. That victory, along with other

93actions that were initiated during the following months, drew the colorless Jose Arcadio Segundo

94out of his anonymity, for people had been accustomed to say that he was only good for filling up the

95town with French whores. With the same impulsive decision with which he had auctioned off his

96fighting cocks in order to organize a harebrained boat business, he gave up his position as foreman

97in the banana company and took the side of the workers. Quite soon he was pointed out as the

98agent of an international conspiracy against public order. One night, during the course of a week

99darkened by somber mmors, he miraculously escaped four revolver shots taken at him by an

100unknown party as he was leaving a secret meeting. The atmosphere of the following months was so

101tense that even Ursula perceived it in her dark corner, and she had the impression that once more

102she was living through the dangerous times when her son Aureliano carried the homeopathic pills of

103subversion in his pocket. She tried to speak to Jose Arcadio Segundo, to let him know about that

104precedent, but Aureliano Segundo told her that since the night of the attempt on his life no one

105knew his whereabouts.

106“Just like Aureliano,” Ursula exclaimed. “It’s as if the world were repeating itself.”

107Fernanda, was immune to the uncertainty of those days. She had no contact with the outside

108world since the violent altercation she had had with her husband over her having decided Memes

109fate without his consent. Aureliano Segundo was prepared to rescue his daughter with the help of

110the police if necessary, but Fernanda showed him some papers that were proof that she had entered

111the convent of her own free will. Meme had indeed signed once she was already behind the iron

112grating and she did it with the same indifference with which she had allowed herself to be led away.

113Underneath it all, Aureliano Segundo did not believe in the legitimacy of the proof. Just as he never

114believed that Mauricio Babilonia had gone into the yard to steal chickens, but both expedients

115served to ease his conscience, and thus he could go back without remorse under the shadow of Petra

116Cotes, where he revived his noisy revelry and unlimited gourmandizing. Foreign to the restlessness

117of the town, deaf to Ursula’s quiet predictions. Fernanda gave the last tarn to the screw of her

118preconceived plan. She wrote a long letter to her son Jose Arcadio, who was then about to take his

119first orders, and in it she told him that his sister Renata had expired in the peace of the Lord and as a

120consequence of the black vomit. Then she put Amaranta Ursula under the care of Santa Sofia de la

121Piedad and dedicated herself to organizing her correspondence with the invisible doctors, which had

122been upset by Meme’s trouble. The first thing that she did was to set a definite date for the

123postponed telepathic operation. But the invisible doctors answered her that it was not wise so long

124as the state of social agitation continued in Macondo. She was so urgent and so poorly Informed

125that she explained to them In another letter that there was no such state of agitation and that

126everything was the result of the lunacy of a brother-in-law of hers who was fiddling around at that

127time in that labor union nonsense just as he had been involved with cockfighting and riverboats

128before. They were still not in agreement on the hot Wednesday when an aged nun knocked at the

129door bearing a small basket on her arm. When she opened the door Santa Sofia de la Piedad thought

130that it was a gift and tried to take the small basket that was covered with a lovely lace wrap. But the

131nun stopped her because she had instmctions to give it personally and with the strictest secrecy to

132Dona Fernanda del Carpio de Buendia. It was Meme’s son. Fernanda’s former spiritual director

133explained to her in a letter that he had been born two months before and that they had taken the

134privilege of baptizing him Aureliano, for his grandfather, because his mother would not open her

135lips to tell them her wishes. Fernanda rose up inside against that trick of fate, but she had sufficient

136strength to hide it in front of the nun.

137“We’ll tell them that we found him floating in the basket,” she said smiling.

138“No one will believe it,” the nun said.

139“If they believe it in the Bible,” Fernanda replied, “I don’t see why they shouldn’t believe it from

140me. ”

141The nun lunched at the house while she waited for the train back, and in accordance with the

142discretion they asked of her, she did not mention the child again, but Fernanda viewed her as an

143undesirable witness of her shame and lamented the fact that they had abandoned the medieval

144custom of hanging a messenger who bore bad news. It was then that she decided to drown the child

145in the cistern as soon as the nun left, but her heart was not strong enough and she preferred to wait

146patiendy until the infinite goodness of God would free her from the annoyance.

147The new Aureliano was a year old when the tension of the people broke with no forewarning.

148Jose Arcadio Segundo and other union leaders who had remained underground until then suddenly

149appeared one weekend and organized demonstrations in towns throughout the banana region. The

150police merely maintained public order. But on Monday night the leaders were taken from their

151homes and sent to jail in the capital of the province with two-pound irons on their legs. Taken

152among them were Jose Arcadio Segundo and Lorenzo Gavilan, a colonel in the Mexican revolution,

153exiled in Macondo, who said that he had been witness to the heroism of his comrade Artemio Cruz.

154They were set free, however, within three months because of the fact that the government and the

155banana company could not reach an agreement as to who should feed them in jail. The protests of

156the workers this time were based on the lack of sanitary facilities in their living quarters, the

157nonexistence of medical services, and terrible working conditions. They stated, furthermore, that

158they were not being paid in real money but in scrip, which was good only to buy Virginia ham in the

159company commissaries. Jose Arcadio Segundo was put in jail because he revealed that the scrip

160system was a way for the company to finance its fruit ships; which without the commissary

161merchandise would have to return empty from New Orleans to the banana ports. The other

162complaints were common knowledge. The company physicians did not examine the sick but had

163them line up behind one another in the dispensaries and a nurse would put a pill the color of copper

164sulfate on their tongues, whether they had malaria, gonorrhea, or constipation. It was a cure that was

165so common that children would stand in line several times and instead of swallowing the pills would

166take them home to use as bingo markers. The company workers were crowded together in miserable

167barracks. The engineers, instead of putting in toilets, had a portable latrine for every fifty people

168brought to the camps at Christmas time and they held public demonstrations of how to use them so

169that they would last longer. The decrepit lawyers dressed in black who during other times had

170besieged Colonel Aureliano Buendia and who now were controlled by the banana company

171dismissed those demands with decisions that seemed like acts of magic. When the workers drew up

172a list of unanimous petitions, a long time passed before they were able to notify the banana company

173officially. As soon as he found out about the agreement Mr. Brown hitched his luxurious glassed-in

174coach to the train and disappeared from Macondo along with the more prominent representatives of

175his company. Nonetheless some workers found one of them the following Saturday in a brothel and

176they made him sign a copy of the sheet with the demands while he was naked with the women who

177had helped to entrap him. The mournful lawyers showed in court that that man had nothing to do

178with the company and in order that no one doubt their arguments they had him jailed as an

179impostor. Later on, Mr. Brown was surprised traveling incognito, in a third-class coach and they

180made him sign another copy of the demands. On the following day he appeared before the judges

181with his hair dyed black and speaking flawless Spanish. The lawyers showed that the man was not

182Mr. Jack Brown, the superintendent of the banana company, born in Prattville Alabama, but a

183harmless vendor of medicinal plants, born in Macondo and baptized there with the name of

184Dagoberto Fonseca. A while later, faced with a new attempt by the workers the lawyers publicly

185exhibited Mr. Brown’s death certificate, attested to by consuls and foreign ministers which bore witness that on June ninth last he had been run over by a fire engine in Chicago. Tired of that

186hermeneutical delirium, the workers turned away from the authorities in Macondo and brought their

187complaints up to the higher courts. It was there that the sleight-of-hand lawyers proved that the

188demands lacked all validity for the simple reason that the banana company did not have, never had

189had, and never would have any workers in its service because they were all hired on a temporary and

190occasional basis. So that the fable of the Virginia ham was nonsense, the same as that of the

191miraculous pills and the Yuletide toilets, and by a decision of the court it was established and set

192down in solemn decrees that the workers did not exist.

193The great strike broke out. Cultivation stopped halfway, the fruit rotted on the trees and the

194hundred-twenty-car trains remained on the sidings. The idle workers overflowed the towns. The

195Street of the Turks echoed with a Saturday that lasted for several days and in the poolroom at the

196Hotel Jacob they had to arrange twenty-four-hour shifts. That was where Jose Arcadio Segundo was

197on the day it was announced that the army had been assigned to reestablish public order. Although

198he was not a man given to omens, the news was like an announcement of death that he had been

199waiting for ever since that distant morning when Colonel Gerineldo Marquez had let him see an

200execution. The bad omen did not change his solemnity, however. He took the shot he had planned

201and it was good. A short time later the dmmbeats, the shrill of the bugle, the shouting and running

202of the people told him that not only had the game of pool come to an end, but also the silent and

203solitary game that he had been playing with himself ever since that dawn execution. Then he went

204out into the street and saw them. There were three regiments, whose march in time to a galley dmm

205made the earth tremble. Their snorting of a many-headed dragon filled the glow of noon with a

206pestilential vapor. They were short, stocky, and brutelike. They perspired with the sweat of a horse

207and had a smell of suntanned hide and the taciturn and impenetrable perseverance of men from the

208uplands. Although it took them over an hour to pass by, one might have thought that they were only

209a few squads marching in a circle, because they were all identical, sons of the same bitch, and with

210the same stolidity they all bore the weight of their packs and canteens, the shame of their rifles with

211fixed bayonets, and the chancre of blind obedience and a sense of honor. Ursula heard them pass

212from her bed in the shadows and she made a crow with her fingers. Santa Sofia de la Piedad existed

213for an instant, leaning over the embroidered tablecloth that she had just ironed, and she thought of

214her son, Jose Arcadio Segundo, who without changing expression watched the last soldiers pass by

215the door of the Hotel Jacob.

216Martial law enabled the army to assume the functions of arbitrator in the controversy, but no

217effort at conciliation was made. As soon as they appeared in Macondo, the soldiers put aside their

218rifles and cut and loaded the bananas and started the trains mnning. The workers, who had been

219content to wait until then, went into the woods with no other weapons but their working machetes

220and they began to sabotage the sabotage. They burned plantations and commissaries, tore up tracks

221to impede the passage of the trains that began to open their path with machine-gun fire, and they cut

222telegraph and telephone wires. The irrigation ditches were stained with blood. Mr. Brown, who was

223alive in the electrified chicken coop, was taken out of Macondo with his family and those of his

224fellow countrymen and brought to a safe place under the protection of the army. The situation was

225threatening to lead to a bloody and unequal civil war when the authorities called upon the workers

226to gather in Macondo. The summons announced that the civil and military leader of the province

227would arrive on the following Friday ready to intercede in the conflict.

228Jose Arcadio Segundo was in the crowd that had gathered at the station on Friday since early in

229the morning. He had taken part in a meeting of union leaders and had been commissioned, along

230with Colonel Gavilan, to mingle in the crowd and orient it according to how things went. He did not

231feel well and a salty paste was beginning to collect on his palate when he noticed that the army had

232set up machine-gun emplacements around the small square and that the wired city of the banana company was protected by artillery pieces. Around twelve o’clock, waiting for a train that was not

233arriving, more than three thousand people, workers, women, and children, had spilled out of the

234open space in front of the station and were pressing into the neighboring streets, which the army

235had closed off with rows of machine guns. At that time it all seemed more like a jubilant fair than a

236waiting crowd. They had brought over the fritter and drink stands from the Street of the Turks and

237the people were in good spirits as they bore the tedium of waiting and the scorching sun. A short

238time before three o’clock the mmor spread that the official train would not arrive until the following

239day. The crowd let out a sigh of disappointment. An army lieutenant then climbed up onto the roof

240of the station where there were four machine-gun emplacements aiming at the crowd and called for

241silence. Next to Jose Arcadio Segundo there was a barefooted woman, very fat, with two children

242between the ages of four and seven. She was carrying the smaller one and she asked Jose Arcadio

243Segundo, without knowing him, if he would lift up the other one so that he could hear better. Jose

244Arcadio Segundo put the child on his shoulders. Many years later that child would still tell, to the

245disbelief of all, that he had seen the lieutenant reading Decree No. 4 of the civil and military leader

246of the province through an old phonograph horn. It had been signed by General Carlos Cortes

247Vargas and his secretary. Major Enrique Garcia Isaza, and in three articles of eighty words he

248declared the strikers to be a “bunch of hoodlums” and he authorized the army to shoot to kill.

249After the decree was read, in the midst of a deafening hoot of protest, a captain took the place of

250the lieutenant on the roof of the station and with the horn he signaled that he wanted to speak. The

251crowd was quiet again.

252“Ladies and gentlemen,” the captain said in a low voice that was slow and a little tired, “you have

253five minutes to withdraw. ”

254The redoubled hooting and shouting drowned out the bugle call that announced the start of the

255count. No one moved.

256Five minutes have passed,” the captain said in the same tone. “One more minute and we’ll open

257fire. ”

258Jose Arcadio Segundo, sweating ice, lowered the child and gave him to the woman. “Those

259bastards might just shoot,” she murmured. Jose Arcadio Segundo did not have time to speak

260because at that instant he recognized the hoarse voice of Colonel Gavilan echoing the words of the

261woman with a shout. Intoxicated by the tension, by the miraculous depth of the silence, and

262furthermore convinced that nothing could move that crowd held tight in a fascination with death,

263Jose Arcadio Segundo raised himself up over the heads in front of him and for the first time in his

264life he raised his voice.

265“You bastards!” he shouted. “Take the extra minute and stick it up your ass!”

266After his shout something happened that did not bring on fright but a kind of hallucination. The

267captain gave the order to fire and fourteen machine guns answered at once. But it all seemed like a

268farce. It was as if the machine guns had been loaded with caps, because their panting rattle could be

269heard and their incandescent spitting could be seen, but not the slightest reaction was perceived, not

270a cry, not even a sigh among the compact crowd that seemed petrified by an instantaneous

271invulnerability. Suddenly, on one side-of the station, a cry of death tore open the enchantment:

272“Aaaagh, Mother.” A seismic voice, a volcanic breath, the roar of a cataclysm broke out in the center

273of the crowd with a great potential of expansion. Jose Arcadio Segundo barely had time to pick up

274the child while the mother with the other one was swallowed up by the crowd that swirled about in

275panic.

276Many years later that child would still tell, in spite of people thinking that he was a crazy old man,

277how Jose Arcadio Segundo had lifted him over his head and hauled him, almost in the air, as if

278floating on the terror of the crowd, toward a nearby street. The child’s privileged position allowed him to see at that moment that the wild mass was starting to get to the comer and the row of

279machine guns opened fire. Several voices shouted at the same time:

280“Get down! Get down!”

281The people in front had already done so, swept down by the wave of bullets. The survivors,

282instead of getting down, tried to go back to the small square, and the panic became a dragon’s tail as

283one compact wave ran against another which was moving in the opposite direction, toward the

284other dragon’s tail In the street across the way, where the machine guns were also firing without

285cease. They were Penned in. swirling about in a gigantic whirlwind that little by little was being

286reduced to its epicenter as the edges were systematically being cut off all around like an onion being

287peeled by the insatiable and methodical shears of the machine guns. The child saw a woman

288kneeling with her arms in the shape of a cross in an open space, mysteriously free of the stampede.

289Jose Arcadio Segundo put him up there at the moment he fell with his face bathed in blood, before

290the colossal troop wiped out the empty space, the kneeling woman, the light of the high, drought-

291stricken sky, and the whorish world where Ursula Iguaran had sold so many little candy animals.

292When Jose Arcadio Segundo came to he was lying face up in the darkness. He realized that he

293was riding on an endless and silent train and that his head was caked with dry blood and that all his

294bones ached. He felt an intolerable desire to sleep. Prepared to sleep for many hours, safe from the

295terror and the horror, he made himself comfortable on the side that pained him less, and only then

296did he discover that he was lying against dead people. There was no free space in the car except for

297an aisle in the middle. Several hours must have passed since the massacre because the corpses had

298the same temperature as a plaster in autumn and the same consistency of petrified foam that it had,

299and those who had put them in the car had had time to pile them up in the same way in which they

300transported bunches of bananas. Trying to flee from the nightmare, Jose Arcadio Segundo dragged

301himself from one car to an other in the direction in which the train was heading, and in the flashes

302of light that broke through the wooden slats as they went through sleeping towns he saw the man

303corpses, woman corpses, child corpses who would be thrown into the sea like rejected bananas. He

304recognized only a woman who sold drinks in the square and Colonel Gavilan, who still held

305wrapped in his hand the belt with a buckle of Morelia silver with which he had tried to open his way

306through the panic. When he got to the first car he jumped into the darkness and lay beside the tracks

307until the train had passed. It was the longest one he had ever seen, with almost two hundred freight

308cars and a locomotive at either end and a third one in the middle. It had no lights, not even the red

309and green running lights, and it slipped off with a nocturnal and stealthy velocity. On top of the cars

310there could be seen the dark shapes of the soldiers with their emplaced machine guns.

311After midnight a torrential cloudburst came up. Jose Arcadio Segundo did not know where it was

312that he had jumped off, but he knew that by going in the opposite direction to that of the train he

313would reach Macondo. After walking for more than three hours, soaked to the skin, with a terrible

314headache, he was able to make out the first houses in the light of dawn. Attracted by the smell of

315coffee, he went into a kitchen where a woman with a child in her arms was leaning over the stove.

316“Hello,” he said, exhausted. “I’m Jose Arcadio Segundo Buendia.”

317He pronounced his whole name, letter by letter, in order to convince her that he was alive. He

318was wise in doing so, because the woman had thought that he was an apparition as she saw the dirty,

319shadowy figure with his head and clothing dirty with blood and touched with the solemnity of death

320come through the door. She recognized him. She brought him a blanket so that he could wrap

321himself up while his clothes dried by the fire, she warmed some water to wash his wound, which was

322only a flesh wound, and she gave him a clean diaper to bandage his head. Then she gave him a mug

323of coffee without sugar as she had been told the Buendias drank it, and she spread his clothing out

324near the fire.

325Jose Arcadio Segundo did not speak until he had finished drinking his coffee.

326“There must have been three thousand of them” he murmured.

327“What?”

328“The dead,” he clarified. “It must have been an of the people who were at the station.”

329The woman measured him with a pitying look. “There haven’t been any dead here,” she said.

330“Since the time of your uncle, the colonel, nothing has happened in Macondo.” In the three kitchens

331where Jose Arcadio Segundo stopped before reaching home they told him the same thing. “There

332weren’t any dead. He went through the small square by the station and he saw the fritter stands piled

333one on top of the other and he could find no trace of the massacre. The streets were deserted under

334the persistent rain and the houses locked up with no trace of life inside. The only human note was

335the first tolling of the bells for mass. He knocked at the door at Colonel Gavilan’s house. A pregnant

336woman whom he had seen several times closed the door in his face. “He left,” she said, frightened.

337“He went back to his own country.” The main entrance to the wire chicken coop was guarded as

338always by two local policemen who looked as if they were made of stone under the rain, with

339raincoats and mbber boots. On their marginal street the West Indian Negroes were singing Saturday

340psalms. Jose Arcadio Segundo jumped over the courtyard wall and entered the house through the

341kitchen. Santa Sofia de la Piedad barely raised her voice. “Don’t let Fernanda see you,” she said.

342“She’s just getting up.” As if she were fulfilling an implicit pact, she took her son to the

343“chamberpot room.” arranged Melquiades’ broken-down cot for him and at two in the afternoon,

344while Fernanda was taking her siesta, she passed a plate of food in to him through the window.

345Aureliano Segundo had slept at home because the rain had caught him time and at three in the

346afternoon he was still waiting for it to clear. Informed in secret by Santa Sofia de la Piedad, he

347visited his brother in Melquiades’ room at that time. He did not believe the version of the massacre

348or the nightmare trip of the train loaded with corpses traveling toward the sea either. The night

349before he had read an extraordinary proclamation to the nation which said that the workers had left

350the station and had returned home in peaceful groups. The proclamation also stated that the union

351leaders, with great patriotic spirit, had reduced their demands to two points: a reform of medical

352services and the building of latrines in the living quarters. It was stated later that when the military

353authorities obtained the agreement with the workers, they hastened to tell Mr. Brown and he not

354only accepted the new conditions but offered to pay for three days of public festivities to celebrate

355the end of the conflict. Except that when the military asked him on what date they could announce

356the signing of the agreement, he looked out the window at the sky crossed with lightning flashes and

357made a profound gesture of doubt.

358“When the rain stops,” he said. “As long as the rain lasts we’re suspending all activities.”

359It had not rained for three months and there had been a drought. But when Mr. Brown

360announced his decision a torrential downpour spread over the whole banana region. It was the one

361that caught Jose Arcadio Segundo on his way to Macondo. A week later it was still raining. The

362official version, repeated a thousand times and mangled out all over the country by every means of

363communication the government found at hand, was finally accepted: there were no dead, the

364satisfied workers had gone back to their families, and the banana company was suspending all

365activity until the rains stopped. Martial law continued with an eye to the necessity of taking

366emergency measures for the public disaster of the endless downpour, but the troops were confined

367to quarters. During the day the soldiers walked through the torrents in the streets with their pant

368legs rolled up, playing with boats with the children. At night after taps, they knocked doors down

369with their rifle butts, hauled suspects out of their beds, and took them off on trips from which there

370was no return. The search for and extermination of the hoodlums, murderers, arsonists, and rebels

371of Decree No. 4 was still going on, but the military denied it even to the relatives of the victims who

372crowded the commandant’s offices in search of news. “You must have been dreaming,” the officers insisted. “Nothing has happened in Macondo, nothing has ever happened, and nothing ever will

373happen. “This is a happy town.” In that way they were finally able to wipe out the union leaders.

374The only survivor was Jose Arcadio Segundo. One February night the unmistakable blows of rifle

375butts were heard at the door. Aureliano Segundo, who was still waiting for it to clear, opened the

376door to six soldiers under the command of an officer. Soaking from the rain, without saying a word,

377they searched the house room by room, closet by closet, from parlor to pantry. Ursula woke up

378when they turned on the light in her room and she did not breathe while the march went on but

379held her fingers in the shape of a cross, pointing them to where the soldiers were moving about.

380Santa Sofia de la Piedad managed to warn Jose Arcadio Segundo, who was sleeping in Melquiades’

381room, but he could see that it was too late to try to escape. So Santa Sofia de la Piedad locked the

382door again and he put on his shirt and his shoes and sat down on the cot to wait for them. At that