1SITTNG IN THE WICKER ROCKING chair with her interrupted work in her lap, Amaranta watched

2Aureliano, Jose , his chin covered with foam, stropping his razor to give himself his first shave. His

3blackheads bled and he cut his upper lip as he tried to shape a mustache of blond fuzz and when it

4was all over he looked the same as before, but the laborious process gave Amaranta the feeling that

5she had begun to grow old at that moment.

6“You look just like Aureliano when he was your age,” she said. “You’re a man now.”

7He had been for a long time, ever since that distant day when Amaranta thought he was still a

8child and continued getting undressed in front of him in the bathroom as she had always done, as

9she had been used to doing ever since Pilar Ternera had turned him over to her to finish his

10upbringing. The first time that he saw her the only thing that drew his attention was the deep

11depression between her breasts. He was so innocent that he asked her what had happened to her

12and Amaranta pretended to dig into her breasts with the tips of her fingers and answered: “They

13gave me some terrible cuts.” Some time later, when she had recovered from Pietro Crespi’s suicide

14and would bathe with Aureliano Jose again, he no longer paid attention to the depression but felt a

15strange trembling at the sight of the splendid breasts with their brown nipples. He kept on

16examining her, discovering the miracle of her intimacy inch by inch, and he felt his skin tingle as he

17contemplated the way her skin tingled when it touched the water. Ever since he was a small child he

18had the custom of leaving his hammock and waking up in Amaranta’s bed, because contact with her

19was a way of overcoming his fear of the dark. But since that day when he became aware of his own

20nakedness, it was not fear of the dark that drove him to crawl in under her mosquito netting but an

21urge to feel Amaranta’s warm breathing at dawn. Early one morning during the time when she

22refused Colonel Gerineldo Marquez, Aureliano Jose awoke with the feeling that he could not

23breathe. He felt Amaranta’s fingers searching across his stomach like warm and anxious little

24caterpillars. Pretending to sleep, he changed his position to make it easier, and then he felt the hand

25without the black bandage diving like a blind shellfish into the algae of his anxiety. Although they

26seemed to ignore what both of them knew and what each one knew that the other knew, from that

27night on they were yoked together in an inviolable complicity. Aureliano Jose could not get to sleep

28until he heard the twelve-o’clock waltz on the parlor dock, and the mature maiden whose skin was

29beginning to grow sad did not have a moments’ rest until she felt slip in under her mosquito netting

30that sleepwalker whom she had raised, not thinking that he would be a palliative for her solitude.

31Later they not only slept together, naked, exchanging exhausting caresses, but they would also chase

32each other into the corners of the house and shut themselves up in the bedrooms at any hour of the

33day in a permanent state of unrelieved excitement. They were almost discovered by Ursula one

34afternoon when she went into the granary as they were starting to kiss. “Do you love your aunt a

35lot? ” she asked Aureliano Jose in an innocent way. He answered that he did. “That’s good of you,”

36Ursula concluded and finished measuring the flour for the bread and returned to the kitchen. That

37episode drew Amaranta out of her delirium. She realized that she had gone too far, that she was no

38longer playing kissing games with a child, but was floundering about in an autumnal passion, one

39that was dangerous and had no future, and she cut it off with one stroke. Aureliano Jose, who was

40then finishing his military training, finally woke up to reality and went to sleep in the barracks. On

41Saturdays he would go with the soldiers to Catarino’s store. He was seeking consolation for his

42abrupt solitude, for his premature adolescence with women who smelled of dead flowers, whom he

43idealized in the darkness and changed into Amaranta by means of the anxious efforts of his

44imagination.

45A short time later contradictory news of the war began to come in. While the government itself

46admitted the progress of the rebellion, the officers in Macondo had confidential reports of the

47imminence of a negotiated peace. Toward the first of April a special emissary identified himself to

48Colonel Gerineldo Marquez. He confirmed the fact to him that the leaders of the party had indeed

49established contact with the rebel leaders in the interior and were on the verge of arranging an

50armistice in exchange for three cabinet posts for the Liberals, a minority representation in the

51congress, and a general amnesty for rebels who laid down their arms. The emissary brought a highly

52confidential order from Colonel Aureliano Buendfa, who was not in agreement with the terms of the

53armistice. Colonel Gerineldo Marquez was to choose five of his best men and prepare to leave the

54country with them. The order would be carried out with the strictest secrecy. One week before the

55agreement was announced, and in the midst of a storm of contradictory mmors, Colonel Aureliano

56Buendfa and ten tmsted officers, among them Colonel Roque Carnicero, stealthily arrived in

57Macondo after midnight, dismissed the garrison, buried their weapons, and destroyed their records.

58By dawn they had left town, along with Colonel Gerineldo Marquez and his five officers. It was such

59a quick and secret operation that Ursula did not find out about it until the last moment, when

60someone tapped on her bedroom window and whispered, “If you want to see Colonel Aureliano

61Buendfa, come to the door right now.” Ursula Jumped out of bed and went to the door in her night¬

62gown and she was just able to see the horsemen who were leaving town gallop off in a mute cloud

63of dust. Only on the following day did she discover that Aureliano Jose had gone with his father.

64Ten days after a joint communique by the government and the opposition announced the end of

65the war, there was news of the first armed uprising of Colonel Aureliano Buendfa on the western

66border. His small and poorly armed force was scattered in less than a week. But during that year,

67while Liberals and Conservatives tried to make the country believe in reconciliation, he attempted

68seven other revolts. One night he bombarded Riohacha from a schooner and the garrison dragged

69out of bed and shot the fourteen best-known Liberals in the town as a reprisal. For more than two

70weeks he held a customs post on the border and from there sent the nation a call to general war.

71Another of his expectations was lost for three months in the jungle in a mad attempt to cross more

72than a thousand miles of virgin territory in order to proclaim war on the outskirts of the capital. On

73one occasion he was lea than fifteen miles away from Macondo and was obliged by government

74patrols to hide in the mountains, very close to the enchanted region where his father had found the

75fossil of a Spanish galleon many years before.

76Visitacion died around that time. She had the pleasure of dying a natural death after having

77renounced a throne out of fear of insomnia, and her last wish was that they should dig up the wages

78she had saved for more than twenty years under her bed and send the money to Colonel Aureliano

79Buendfa so that he could go on with the war. But Ursula did not bother to dig it up because it was

80rumored in those days that Colonel Aureliano Buendfa had been killed in a landing near the

81provincial capital. The official announcement—the fourth in less than two years—was considered

82true for almost six months because nothing further was heard of him. Suddenly, when Ursula and

83Amaranta had added new mourning to the past period, unexpected news arrived. Colonel Aureliano

84Buendfa was alive, but apparently he had stopped harassing the government of his country and had

85joined with the victorious federalism of other republics of the Caribbean. He would show up under

86different names farther and farther away from his own country. Later it would be learned that the

87idea that was working on him at the time was the unification of the federalist forms of Central

88America in order to wipe out conservative regimes from Alaska to Patagonia. The first direct news

89that Ursula received from him, several years after his departure, was a wrinkled and faded letter that

90had arrived, passing through various hands, from Santiago, Cuba.

91“We’ve lost him forever,” Ursula exclaimed on reading it. “If he follows this path he’ll spend

92Christmas at the ends of the earth. ”

93The person to whom she said it, who was the first to whom she showed the letter, was the

94Conservative general Jose Raquel Moncada, mayor of Macondo since the end of the war. “This

95Aureliano,” General Moncada commented, “what a pity that he’s not a Conservative.” He really

96admired him. Like many Conservative civilians, Jose Raquel Moncada had waged war in defense of

97his party and had earned the title of general on the field of battle, even though he was not a military

98man by profession. On the contrary, like so many of his fellow party members, he was an

99antimilitarist. He considered military men unprincipled loafers, ambitious plotters, experts in facing

100down civilians in order to prosper during times of disorder. Intelligent, pleasant, mddy-faced, a man

101who liked to eat and watch cockfights, he had been at one time the most feared adversary of Colonel

102Aureliano Buendfa. He succeeded in imposing his authority over the career officers in a wide sector

103along the coast. One time when he was forced by strategic circumstances to abandon a stronghold

104to the forces of Colonel Aureliano Buendfa, he left two letters for him. In one of them quite long, he

105invited him to join in a campaign to make war more humane. The other letter was for his wife, who

106lived in Liberal territory, and he left it with a plea to see that it reached its destination. From then on,

107even in the bloodiest periods of the war, the two commanders would arrange tmces to exchange

108prisoners. They were pauses with a certain festive atmosphere, which General Moncada took

109advantage of to teach Colonel Aureliano Buendfa how to play chess. They became great friends.

110They even came to think about the possibility of coordinating the popular elements of both parties,

111doing away with the influence of the military men and professional politicians, and setting up a

112humanitarian regime that would take the best from each doctrine. When the war was over, while

113Colonel Aureliano, Buendfa was sneaking about through the narrow trails of permanent sub.

114version, General Moncada was named magistrate of Macondo. He wore civilian clothes, replaced the

115soldiers with unarmed policemen, enforced the amnesty laws, and helped a few families of Liberals

116who had been killed in the war. He succeeded in having Macondo raised to the status of a

117municipality and he was therefore its first mayor, and he created an atmosphere of confidence that

118made people think of the war as an absurd nightmare of the past. Father Nicanor, consumed by

119hepatic fever, was replaced by Father Coronel, whom they called “The Pup,” a veteran of the first

120federalist war. Bruno Crespi, who was married to Amparo Mos. cote, and whose shop of toys and

121musical instruments continued to prosper, built a theater which Spanish companies included in their

122Itineraries. It was a vast open-air hall with wooden benches, a velvet curtain with Greek masks, and

123three box offices in the shape of lions’ heads, through whose mouths the tickets were sold. It was

124also about that time that the school was rebuilt. It was put under the charge of Don Melchor

125Escalona, an old teacher brought from the swamp, who made his lazy students walk on their knees

126in the lime-coated courtyard and made the students who talked in class eat hot chili with the

127approval of their parents. Aureliano Segundo and Jose Arcadio Segundo, the willful twins of Santa

128Sofia de la Piedad, were the first to sit in the classroom, with their slates, their chalk, and their

129aluminum jugs with their names on them. Remedios, who inherited her mother’s pure beauty, began

130to be known as Remedios the Beauty. In spite of time, of the superimposed Periods of mourning,

131and her accumulated afflictions, Ursula resisted growing old. Aided by Santa Sofia de la Piedad, she

132gave a new drive to her pastry business and in a few years not only recovered the fortune that her

133son had spent in the war, but she once more stuffed with pure gold the gourds buried in the

134bedroom. “As long as God gives me life,” she would say, “there will always be money in this

135madhouse.” That was how things were when Aureliano Jose deserted the federal troops in

136Nicaragua, signed on as a crewman on a German ship, and appeared in the kitchen of the house,

137sturdy as a horse, as dark and long-haired as an Indian, and with a secret determination to marry

138Amaranta.

139When Amaranta, saw him come in, even though he said nothing she knew immediately why he

140had come back. At the table they did not dare look each other in the face. But two weeks after his

141return, in the presence of Ursula, he set his eyes on hers and said to her, “I always thought a lot

142about you.” Amaranta avoided him. She guarded against chance meetings. She tried not to become

143separated from Remedios the Beauty. She was ashamed of the blush that covered her cheeks on the

144day her nephew asked her how long she intended wearing the black bandage on her hand, for she

145interpreted it as an allusion to her virginity. When he arrived, she barred the door of her bedroom,

146but she heard his peaceful snoring in the next room for so many nights that she forgot about the

147precaution. Early one morning, almost two months after his return, she heard him come into the

148bedroom. Then, instead of fleeing, instead of shouting as she had thought she would, she let herself

149be saturated with a soft feeling of relaxation. She felt him slip in under the mosquito netting as he

150had done when he was a child, as he had always done, and she could not repress her cold sweat and

151the chattering of her teeth when she realized that he was completely naked. “Go away,” she

152whispered, suffocating with curiosity. “Go away or I’ll scream.” But Aureliano Jose knew then what

153he had to do, because he was no longer a child but a barracks animal. Starting with that night the

154dull, inconsequential battles began again and would go on until dawn. “I’m your aunt,” Amaranta

155murmured, spent. “It’s almost as if I were your mother, not just because of my age but because the

156only thing I didn’t do for you was nurse you.” Aureliano would escape at dawn and come back early

157in the morning on the next day, each time more excited by the proof that she had not barred the

158door. He had nit stopped desiring her for a single instant. He found her in the dark bedrooms of

159captured towns, especially in the most abject ones, and he would make her materialize in the smell

160of dry blood on the bandages of the wounded, in the instantaneous terror of the danger of death, at

161all times and in all places. He had fled from her in an attempt to wipe out her memory, not only

162through distance but by means of a muddled fury that his companions at arms took to be boldness,

163but the more her image wallowed in the dunghill of the war, the more the war resembled Amaranta.

164That was how he suffered in exile, looking for a way of lulling her with, his own death, until he

165heard some old man tell the tale of the man who had married his aunt, who was also his cousin, and

166whose son ended up being his own grandfather.

167“Can a person marry his own aunt?” he asked, startled.

168“He not only can do that, a soldier answered him. “but we’re fighting this war against the priests

169so that a person can marry his own mother. ”

170Two weeks later he deserted. He found Amaranta more withered than in his memory, more

171melancholy and shy, and now really turning the last corner of maturity, but more feverish than ever

172in the darkness of her bedroom and more challenging than ever in the aggressiveness of her

173resistance. “You’re a brute,” Amaranta would tell him as she was harried by his hounds. “You can’t

174do that to a poor aunt unless you have a special dispensation from the Pope.” Aureliano, Jose

175promised to go to Rome, he promised to go across Europe on his knees to kiss the sandals of the

176Pontiff just so that she would lower her drawbridge.

177“It’s not just that,” Amaranta retorted. “Any children will be born with the tail of a pig.”

178Aureliano Jose was deaf to all arguments.

179“I don’t care if they’re born as armadillos,” he begged.

180Early one morning, vanquished by the unbearable pain of repressed virility, he went to Catarino’s.

181He found a woman with flaccid breasts, affectionate and cheap, who calmed his stomach for some

182time. He tried to apply the treatment of disdain to Amaranta. He would see her on the porch

183working at the sewing machine, which she had learned to operate with admirable skill, and he would

184not even speak to her. Amaranta felt freed of a reef, and she herself did not understand why she

185started thinking again at that time about Colonel Gerineldo Marquez, why she remembered with

186such nostalgia the afternoons of Chinese checkers, and why she even desired him as the man in her

187bedroom. Aureliano, Jose did not realize how much ground he had lost on, the night he could no

188longer bear the farce of indifference and went back to Amaranta’s room. She rejected him with an

189inflexible and unmistakable determination, and she barred the door of her bedroom forever.

190A few months after the return of Aureliano Jose an exuberant woman perfumed with jasmine

191appeared at the house with a boy of five. She stated that he was the son of Colonel Aureliano

192Buendia and that she had brought him to Ursula to be baptized. No one doubted the origins of that

193nameless child: he looked exactly like the colonel at the time he was taken to see ice for the first

194time. The woman said that he had been born with his eyes open, looking at people with the

195judgment of an adult, and that she was frightened by his way of staring at things without blinking.

196“He’s identical,” Ursula said. “The only thing missing is for him to make chairs rock by simply

197looking at them.” They christened him Aureliano and with his mother’s last name, since the law did

198not permit a person to bear his father’s name until he had recognized him. General Moncada was

199the godfather. Although Amaranta insisted that he be left so that she could take over his upbringing,

200his mother was against it. Ursula at that time did not know about the custom of sending virgins to

201the bedrooms of soldiers in the same way that hens are turned loose with fine roosters, but in the

202course of that year she found out: nine more sons of Colonel Aureliano Buendia were brought to

203the house to be baptized. The oldest, a strange dark boy with green eyes, who was not at all like his

204father’s family, was over ten years old. They brought children of all ages, all colors, but all males and

205all with a look of solitude that left no doubt as to the relationship. Only two stood out in the group.

206One, large for his age, made smithereens out of the flowerpots and china because his hands seemed

207to have the property of breaking everything they touched. The other was a blond boy with the same

208light eyes as his mother, whose hair had been left to grow long and curly like that of a woman. He

209entered the house with a great deal of familiarity, as if he had been raised there, and he went directly

210to a chest in Ursula’s bedroom and demanded, “I want the mechanical ballerina.” Ursula was

211startled. She opened the chest, searched among the ancient and dusty articles left from the days of

212Melqufades, and wrapped in a pair of stockings she found the mechanical ballerina that Pietro Crespi

213had brought to the house once and that everyone had forgotten about. In less than twelve years they

214baptized with the name Aureliano and the last name of the mother all the sons that the colonel had

215implanted up and down his theater of war: seventeen. At first Ursula would fill their pockets with

216money and Amaranta tried to have them stay. But they finally limited themselves to giving them

217presents and serving as godmothers. “We’ve done our duty by baptizing them,” Ursula would say,

218jotting down in a ledger the name and address of the mother and the place and date of birth of the

219child. “Aureliano needs well-kept accounts so that he can decide things when he comes back.”

220During lunch, commenting with General Moncada about that disconcerting proliferation, she

221expressed the desire for Colonel Aureliano Buendia to come back someday and gather all of his sons

222together in the house.

223“Don’t worry, dear friend,” General Moncada said enigmatically. “He’ll come sooner than you

224suspect. ”

225What General Moncada knew and what he did not wish to reveal at lunch was that Colonel

226Aureliano Buendia was already on his way to head up the most prolonged, radical, and bloody

227rebellion of all those he had started up till then.

228The situation again became as tense as it had been during the months that preceded the first war.

229The cockfights, instituted by the mayor himself, were suspended. Captain Aquiles Ricardo, the

230commander of the garrison, took over the exercise of municipal power. The Liberals looked upon

231him as a provocateur. “Something terrible is going to happen,” Ursula would say to Aureliano Jose.

232“Don’t go out into the street after six o’clock.” The entreaties were useless. Aureliano Jose, just like

233Arcadio in other times, had ceased to belong to her. It was as if his return home, the possibility of

234existing without concerning himself with everyday necessities, had awakened in him the lewd and

235lazy leanings of his uncle Jose Arcadio. His passion for Amaranta had been extinguished without

236leaving any scars. He would drift around, playing pool, easing his solitude with occasional women,

237sacking the hiding places where Ursula had forgotten her money. He ended up coming home only to

238change his clothes. “They’re all alike,” Ursula lamented. “At first they behave very well, they’re

239obedient and prompt and they don’t seem capable of killing a fly, but as soon as their beards appear

240they go to ruin.” Unlike Arcadio, who had never known his real origins, he found out that he was

241the son of Pilar Ternera, who had hung up a hammock so that he could take his siesta in her house.

242More than mother and son, they were accomplices in solitude. Pilar Ternera had lost the trail of all

243hope. Her laugh had taken on the tones of an organ, her breasts had succumbed to the tedium of

244endless caressing, her stomach and her thighs had been the victims of her irrevocable fate as a

245shared woman, but her heart grew old without bitterness. Fat, talkative, with the airs of a matron in

246disgrace, she renounced the sterile illusions of her cards and found peace and consolation in other

247people’s loves. In the house where Aureliano Jose took his siesta, the girls from the neighborhood

248would receive their casual lovers. “Lend me your room, Pilar,” they would simply say when they

249were already inside. “Of course,” Pilar would answer. And if anyone was present she would explain:

250“I’m happy knowing that people are happy in bed.”

251She never charged for the service. She never refused the favor, just as she never refused the

252countless men who sought her out, even in the twilight of her maturity, without giving her money or

253love and only occasionally pleasure. Her five daughters, who inherited a burning seed, had been lost

254on the byways of life since adolescence. Of the two sons she managed to raise, one died fighting in

255the forces of Colonel Aureliano Buendia and the other was wounded and captured at the age of

256fourteen when he tried to steal a crate of chickens in a town in the swamp. In a certain way,

257Aureliano Jose was the tall, dark man who had been promised her for half a century by the king of

258hearts, and like all men sent by the cards he reached her heart when he was already stamped with the

259mark of death. She saw it in the cards.

260“Don’t go out tonight,” she told him. “Stay and sleep here because Carmelita Montiel is getting

261tired of asking me to put her in your room. ”

262Aureliano Jose did not catch the deep feeling of begging that was in the offer.

263“Tell her to wait for me at midnight” he said. He went to the theater, where a Spanish company

264was putting on The Dagger of the Fox, which was really Zorzilla’s play with the title changed by order

265of Captain Aquiles Ricardo, because the Liberals called the Conservatives Goths. Only when he

266handed in his ticket at the door did Aureliano Jose realize that Captain Aquiles Ricardo and two

267soldiers armed with rifles were searching the audience.

268“Be careful, captain,” Aureliano Jose warned him. “The man hasn’t been born yet who can lay

269hands on me.” The captain tried to search him forcibly and Aureliano Jose, who was unarmed,

270began to mn. The soldiers disobeyed the order to shoot. “He’s a Buendia,” one of them explained.

271Blind with rage, the captain then snatched away the rifle, stepped into the center of the street, and

272took aim. ”

273“Cowards!” he shouted. “I only wish it was Colonel Aureliano Buendia.”

274Carmelita Montiel, a twenty-year-old virgin, had just bathed in orange-blossom water and was

275strewing rosemary leaves on Pilar Ternera’s bed when the shot rang out. Aureliano Jose had been

276destined to find with her the happiness that Amaranta had denied him, to have seven children, and

277to die in her arms of old age, but the bullet that entered his back and shattered his chest had been

278directed by a wrong interpretation of the cards. Captain Aquiles Ricardo, who was really the one

279destined to die that night, did indeed die, four hours before Aureliano Jose. As won as the shot was

280heard he was brought down by two simultaneous bullets whose origin was never established and a

281shout of many voices shook the night.

282“Long live the Liberal party! Long live Colonel Aureliano Buendia!”

283At twelve o’clock, when Aureliano, Jose had bled to death and Carmelita Montiel found that the

284cards showing her future were blank, more than four hundred men had filed past the theater and

285discharged their revolvers into the abandoned body of Captain Aquiles Ricardo. A patrol had to use

286a wheelbarrow to carry the body, which was heavy with lead and fell apart like a water-soaked loaf of

287bread.

288Annoyed by the outrages of the regular army, General Jose Raquel Moncada used his political

289influence, put on his uniform again, and assumed the civil and military leadership of Macondo. He

290did not expect, however, that his conciliatory attitude would be able to prevent the inevitable. The

291news in September was contradictory. While the government announced that it was maintaining

292control throughout the country, the Liberals were receiving secret news of armed uprisings in the

293interior. The regime would not admit a state of war until it was proclaimed in a decree that had

294followed a court-martial which had condemned Colonel Aureliano Buendia to death in absentia. The

295first unit that captured him was ordered to carry the sentence out. “This means he’s come back,”

296Ursula said joyfully to General Moncada. But he himself knew nothing about it.

297Actually, Colonel Aureliano Buendia had been in the country for more than a month. He was

298preceded by conflicting rumors, supposed to be in the most distant places at the same time, and

299even General Moncada did not believe in his return until it was officially announced that he had

300seized two states on the coast. “Congratulations, dear friend,” he told Ursula, showing her the

301telegram. “You’ll soon have him here.” Ursula was worried then for the first time. “And what will

302you do? ” she asked. General Moncada had asked himself that same question many times.

303“The same as he, my friend,” he answered. “I’ll do my duty.”

304At dawn on the first of October Colonel Aureliano Buendia attacked Macondo with a thousand

305well-armed men and the garrison received orders to resist to the end. At noon, while General

306Moncada was lunching with Ursula, a rebel cannon shot that echoed in the whole town blew the

307front of the municipal treasury to dust. “They’re as well armed as we are,” General Moncada sighed,

308“but besides that they’re fighting because they want to.” At two o’clock in the afternoon, while the

309earth trembled with the artillery fire from both sides, he took leave of Ursula with the certainty that

310he was fighting a losing battle.

311“I pray to God that you won’t have Aureliano in the house tonight,” he said. “If it does happen

312that way, give him an embrace for me, because I don’t expect ever to see him again. ”

313That night he was captured when he tried to escape from Macondo, after writing a long letter to

314Colonel Aureliano Buendia in which he reminded him of their common aim to humanize the war

315and he wished him a final victory over the corruption of the militarists and the ambitions of the

316politicians in both parties. On the following day Colonel Aureliano Buendia had lunch with him in

317Ursula’s house, where he was being held until a revolutionary court-martial decided his fate. It was a

318friendly gathering. But while the adversaries forgot the war to remember things of the past, Ursula

319had the gloomy feeling that her son was an intruder. She had felt it ever since she saw him come in

320protected by a noisy military retinue, which turned the bedrooms inside out until they were

321convinced there was no danger. Colonel Aureliano Buendia not only accepted it but he gave strict

322orders that no one should come closer than ten feet, not even Ursula, while the members of his

323escort finished placing guards about the house. He was wearing an ordinary denim uniform with no

324insignia of any kind and high boots with spurs that were caked with mud and dried blood. On his

325waist he wore a holster with the flap open and his hand, which was always on the butt of the pistol,

326revealed the same watchful and resolute tension as his look. His head, with deep recessions in the

327hairline now, seemed to have been baked in a slow oven. His face, tanned by the salt of the

328Caribbean, had acquired a metallic hardness. He was preserved against imminent old age by a vitality

329that had something to do with the coldness of his insides. He was taller than when he had left, paler

330and bonier, and he showed the first symptoms of resistance to nostalgia. “Good Lord,” Ursula said

331to herself. “Now he looks like a man capable of anything.” He was. The Aztec shawl that he brought

332Amaranta, the remembrances he spoke of at lunch, the funny stories her told were simple leftovers

333from his humor of a different time. As soon as the order to bury the dead in a common grave was

334carried out, he assigned Colonel Roque Carnicero the minion of setting up courts-martial and he

335went ahead with the exhausting task of imposing radical reforms which would not leave a stone of

336the reestablished Conservative regime in place. “We have to get ahead of the politicians in the

337party,” he said to his aides. “When they open their eyes to reality they’ll find accomplished facts.” It

338was then that he decided to review the titles to land that went back a hundred years and he

339discovered the legalized outrages of his brother, Jose Arcadio. He annulled the registrations with a

340stroke of the pen. As a last gesture of courtesy, he left his affairs for an hour and visited Rebeca to

341bring her up to date on what he was determined to do.

342In the shadows of her house, the solitary widow who at one time had been the confidante of his

343repressed loves and whose persistence had saved his life was a specter out of the past. Encased in

344black down to her knuckles, with her heart turned to ash, she scarcely knew anything about the war.

345Colonel Aureliano Buendia had the impression that the phosphorescence of her bones was showing

346through her skin and that she moved in an atmosphere of Saint Elmo’s fire, in a stagnant air where

347one could still note a hidden smell of gunpowder. He began by advising her to moderate the rigor of

348her mourning, to ventilate the house, to forgive the world for the death of Jose Arcadio. But Rebeca

349was already beyond any vanity. After searching for it uselessly in the taste of earth, in, the perfumed

350letters from Pietro Crespi, in the tempestuous bed of her husband, she had found peace in that

351house where memories materialized through the strength of implacable evocation and walked like

352human beings through the cloistered rooms. Leaning back in her wicker rocking chair, looking at

353Colonel Aureliano Buendia as if he were the one who looked like a ghost out of the past, Rebeca

354was not even upset by the news that the lands usurped by Jose Arcadio would be returned to their

355rightful owners.

356“Whatever you decide will be done, Aureliano,” she sighed. “I always thought and now I have the

357proof that you’re a renegade. ”

358The revision of the deeds took place at the same time as the summary courts-martial presided

359over by Colonel Gerineldo Marquez, which ended with the execution of all officers of the regular

360army who had been taken prisoner by the revolutionaries. The last court-martial was that of Jose

361Raquel Moncada. Ursula intervened. ‘”His government was the best we’ve ever had in Macondo,”

362she told Colonel Aureliano Buendia. “I don’t have to tell you anything about his good heart, about

363his affection for us, because you know better than anyone.” Colonel Aureliano Buendia gave her a

364disapproving look.

365“I can’t take over the job of administering justice,” he replied. “If you have something to say, tell

366it to the court-martial. ”

367Ursula not only did that she also brought all of the mothers of the revolutionary officers who

368lived in Macondo to testify. One by one the old women who had been founders of the town, several

369of whom had taken part in the daring crossing of the mountains, praised the virtues of General

370Moncada. Ursula was the last in line. Her gloomy dignity, the weight of her name, the convincing

371vehemence of her declaration made the scale of justice hesitate for a moment. “You have taken this

372horrible game very seriously and you have done well because you are doing your duty,” she told the

373members of the court. “But don’t forget that as long as God gives us life we will still be mothers and

374no matter how revolutionary you may be, we have the right to pull down your pants and give you a

375whipping at the first sign of disrespect.” The court retired to deliberate as those words still echoed in

376the school that had been turned into a barracks. At midnight General Jose Raquel Moncada was

377sentenced to death. Colonel Aureliano Buendia, in spite of the violent recriminations of Ursula,

378refused to commute the sentence. A short while before dawn he visited the condemned man in the

379room used as a cell.

380“Remember, old friend,” he told him. “I’m not shooting you. It’s the revolution that’s shooting you.

381General Moncada did not even get up from the cot when he saw him come in.

382“Go to hell, friend,” he answered.

383Until that moment, ever since his return. Colonel Aureliano Buendia had not given himself the

384opportunity to see him with his heart. He was startled to see how much he had aged, how his hands

385shook, and the rather punctilious conformity with which he awaited death, and then he felt a great

386disgust with himself, which he mingled with the beginnings of pity.

387“You know better than I,” he said, “that all courts-martial are farces and that you’re really paying

388for the crimes of other people, because this time we’re going to win the war at any price. Wouldn’t

389you have done the same in my place? ”

390General Moncada, got up to clean his thick horn-rimmed glasses on his shirttail. “Probably,” he

391said. “But what worries me is not your shooting me, because after all, for people like us it’s a natural

392death.” He laid his glasses on the bed and took off his watch and chain. “What worries me,” he went