1PILAR TERNERA’S son was brought to his grand parents’ house two weeks after he was born. Ursula

2admitted him gmdgingly, conquered once more by the obstinacy of her husband, who could not

3tolerate the idea that an offshoot of his blood should be adrift, but he imposed the condition that

4the child should never know his true identity. Although he was given the name Jose Arcadio, they

5ended up calling him simply Arcadio so as to avoid confusion. At that time there was so much

6activity in the town and so much bustle in the house that the care of the children was relegated to a

7secondary level. They were put in the care of Visitacion, a Guajiro Indian woman who had arrived in

8town with a brother in flight from a plague of insomnia that had been scourging their tribe for

9several years. They were both so docile and willing to help that Ursula took them on to help her

10with her household chores. That was how Arcadio and Amaranta came to speak the Guajiro

11language before Spanish, and they learned to drink lizard broth and eat spider eggs without Ursula’s

12knowing it, for she was too busy with a promising business in candy animals. Macondo had changed.

13The people who had come with Ursula spread the news of the good quality of its soil and its

14privileged position with respect to the swamp, so that from the narrow village of past times it

15changed into an active town with stores and workshops and a permanent commercial route over

16which the first Arabs arrived with their baggy pants and rings in their ears, swapping glass beads for

17macaws. Jose Arcadio Buendia did not have a moment’s rest. Fascinated by an immediate reality that

18came to be more fantastic than the vast universe of his imagination, he lost all interest in the

19alchemist’s laboratory, put to rest the material that had become attenuated with months of

20manipulation, and went back to being the enterprising man of earlier days when he had decided

21upon the layout of the streets and the location of the new houses so that no one would enjoy

22privileges that everyone did not have. He acquired such authority among the new arrivals that

23foundations were not laid or walls built without his being consulted, and it was decided that he

24should be the one in charge of the distribution of the land. When the acrobat gypsies returned, with

25their vagabond carnival transformed now into a gigantic organization of games of luck and chance,

26they were received with great joy, for it was thought that Jose Arcadio would be coming back with

27them. But Jose Arcadio did not return, nor did they come with the snake-man, who, according to

28what Ursula thought, was the only one who could tell them about their son, so the gypsies were not

29allowed to camp in town or set foot in it in the future, for they were considered the bearers of

30concupiscence and perversion. Jose Arcadio Buendia, however, was explicit in maintaining that the

31old tribe of Melquiades, who had contributed so much to the growth of the village with his age-old

32wisdom and his fabulous inventions, would always find the gates open. But Melquiades’ tribe,

33according to what the wanderers said, had been wiped off the face of the earth because they had

34gone beyond the limits of human knowledge.

35Emancipated for the moment at least from the torment of fantasy, Jose Arcadio Buendia in a

36short time set up a system of order and work which allowed for only one bit of license: the freeing

37of the birds, which, since the time of the founding, had made time merry with their flutes, and

38installing in their place musical clocks in every house. They were wondrous clocks made of carved

39wood, which the Arabs had traded for macaws and which Jose Arcadio Buendia had synchronized

40with such precision that every half hour the town grew merry with the progressive chords of the

41same song until it reached the climax of a noontime that was as exact and unanimous as a complete

42waltz. It was also Jose Arcadio Buendia who decided during those years that they should plant

43almond trees instead of acacias on the streets, and who discovered, without ever revealing it, a way

44to make them live forever. Many years later, when Macondo was a field of wooden houses with zinc

45roofs, the broken and dusty almond trees still stood on the oldest streets, although no one knew

46who had planted them. While his father was putting the town in order and Inis mother was increasing

47their wealth with her marvelous business of candied little roosters and fish, which left the house

48twice a day strung along sticks of balsa wood, Aureliano spent interminable hours in the abandoned

49laboratory, learning the art of silverwork by his own experimentation. He had shot up so fast that in

50a short time the clothing left behind by his brother no longer fit him and he began to wear his

51father’s, but Visitacion had to sew pleats in the shirt and darts in the pants, because Aureliano had

52not sequined the corpulence of the others. Adolescence had taken away the softness of his voice and

53had made him silent and definitely solitary, but, on the other hand, it had restored the intense

54expression that he had had in his eyes when he was born. He concentrated so much on his

55experiments in silverwork that he scarcely left the laboratory to eat. Worried ever his inner

56withdrawal, Jose Arcadio Buendia gave him the keys to the house and a little money, thinking that

57perhaps he needed a woman. But Aureliano spent the money on muriatic acid to prepare some aqua

58regia and he beautified the keys by plating them with gold. His excesses were hardly comparable to

59those of Arcadio and Amaranta, who had already begun to get their second teeth and still went

60about all day clutching at the Indians’ cloaks, stubborn in their decision not to speak Spanish but the

61Guajiro language. “You shouldn’t complain.” Ursula told her husband. “Children inherit their

62parents’ madness.” And as she was lamenting her misfortune, convinced that the wild behavior of

63her children was something as fearful as a pig’s tail, Aureliano gave her a look that wrapped her in an

64atmosphere of uncertainty.

65“Somebody is coming,” he told her.

66Ursula, as she did whenever he made a prediction, tried to break it down with her housewifely

67logic. It was normal for someone to be coming. Dozens of strangers came through Macondo every

68day without arousing suspicion or secret ideas. Nevertheless, beyond all logic, Aureliano was sure of

69Iris prediction.

70“I don’t know who it will be,” he insisted, “but whoever it is is already on the way.”

71That Sunday, in fact, Rebeca arrived. She was only eleven years old. She had made the difficult

72trip from Manaure with some hide dealers who had taken on the task of delivering her along with a

73letter to Jose Arcadio Buendia, but they could not explain precisely who the person was who had

74asked the favor. Her entire baggage consisted of a small trunk, a little rocking chair with small hand-

75painted flowers, and a canvas sack which kept making a cloc-cloc-cloc sound, where she carried her

76parents’ bones. The letter addressed to Jose Arcadio Buendia was written is very warm terms by

77someone who still loved him very much in spite of time and distance, and who felt obliged by a

78basic humanitarian feeling to do the charitable thing and send him that poor unsheltered orphan,

79who was a second cousin of Ursula’s and consequendy also a relative of Jose Arcadio Buendia,

80although farther removed, because she was the daughter of that unforgettable friend Nicanor Ulloa

81and his very worthy wife Rebeca Montiel, may God keep them in His holy kingdom, whose remains

82the girl was carrying so that they might be given Christian burial. The names mentioned, as well as

83the signature on the letter, were perfecdy legible, but neither Jose Arcadio, Buendia nor Ursula

84remembered having any relatives with those names, nor did they know anyone by the name of the

85sender of the letter, much less the remote village of Manaure. It was impossible to obtain any further

86information from the girl. From the moment she arrived she had been sitting in the rocker, sucking

87her finger and observing everyone with her large, startled eyes without giving any sign of

88understanding what they were asking her. She wore a diagonally striped dress that had been dyed

89black, worn by use, and a pair of scaly patent leather boots. Her hair was held behind her ears with

90bows of black ribbon. She wore a scapular with the images worn away by sweat, and on her right

91wrist the fang of a carnivorous animal mounted on a backing of copper as an amulet against the evil

92eye. Her greenish skin, her stomach, round and tense as a drum, revealed poor health and hunger that were older than she was, but when they gave her something to eat she kept the plate on her

93knees without tasting anything. They even began to think that she was a deaf-mute until the Indians

94asked her in their language if she wanted some water and she moved her eyes as if she recognized

95them and said yes with her head.

96They kept her, because there was nothing else they could do. They decided to call her Rebeca,

97which according to the letter was her mother’s name, because Aureliano had the patience to read to

98her the names of all the saints and he did not get a reaction from any one of them. Since there was

99no cemetery in Macondo at that time, for no one had died up till then, they kept the bag of bones to

100wait for a worthy place of burial, and for a long time it got in the way everywhere and would be

101found where least expected, always with its clucking of a broody hen. A long time passed before

102Rebeca became incorporated into the life of the family. She would sit in her small rocker sucking her

103finger in the most remote corner of the house. Nothing attracted her attention except the music of

104the clocks, which she would look for every half hour with her frightened eyes as if she hoped to find

105it someplace in the air. They could not get her to eat for several days. No one understood why she

106had not died of hunger until the Indians, who were aware of everything, for they went ceaselessly

107about the house on their stealthy feet, discovered that Rebeca only liked to eat the damp earth of the

108courtyard and the cake of whitewash that she picked of the walls with her nails. It was obvious that

109her parents, or whoever had raised her, had scolded her for that habit because she did it secretively

110and with a feeling of guilt, trying to put away supplies so that she could eat when no one was

111looking. From then on they put her under an implacable watch. They threw cow gall onto the

112courtyard and, mbbed hot chili on the walls, thinking they could defeat her pernicious vice with

113those methods, but she showed such signs of astuteness and ingenuity to find some earth that

114Ursula found herself forced to use more drastic methods. She put some orange juice and rhubarb

115into a pan that she left in the dew all night and she gave her the dose the following day on an empty

116stomach. Although no one had told her that it was the specific remedy for the vice of eating earth,

117she thought that any bitter substance in an empty stomach would have to make the liver react.

118Rebeca was so rebellious and strong in spite of her frailness that they had to tie her up like a calf to

119make her swallow the medicine, and they could barely keep back her kicks or bear up under the

120strange hieroglyphics that she alternated with her bites and spitting, and that, according to what the

121scandalized Indians said, were the vilest obscenities that one could ever imagine in their language.

122When Ursula discovered that, she added whipping to the treatment. It was never established

123whether it was the rhubarb or the beatings that had effect, or both of them together, but the truth

124was that in a few weeks Rebeca began to show signs of recovery. She took part in the games of

125Arcadio and Amaranta, who treated her like an older sister, and she ate heartily, using the utensils

126properly. It was soon revealed that she spoke Spanish with as much fluency as the Indian language,

127that she had a remarkable ability for manual work, and that she could sing the waltz of the clocks

128with some very funny words that she herself had invented. It did not take long for them to consider

129her another member of the family. She was more affectionate to Ursula than any of her own

130children had been, and she called Arcadio, and Amaranta brother and sister, Aureliano uncle, and

131Jose Arcadio Buendia grandpa. So that she finally deserved, as much as the others, the name of

132Rebeca Buendia, the only one that she ever had and that she bore with dignity until her death.

133One night about the time that Rebeca was cured of the vice of eating earth and was brought to

134sleep in the other children’s room, the Indian woman, who slept with them awoke by chance and

135heard a strange, intermittent sound in the corner. She got up in alarm, thinking that an animal had

136come into the room, and then she saw Rebeca in the rocker, sucking her finger and with her eyes

137lighted up in the darkness like those of a cat. Terrified, exhausted by her fate, Visitacion recognized

138in those eyes the symptoms of the sickness whose threat had obliged her and her brother to exile themselves forever from an age-old kingdom where they had been prince and princess. It was the

139insomnia plague.

140Cataure, the Indian, was gone from the house by morning. His sister stayed because her fatalistic

141heart told her that the lethal sickness would follow her, no matter what, to the farthest corner of the

142earth. No one understood Visitacion’s alarm. “If we don’t ever sleep again, so much the better,” Jose

143Arcadio Buendia said in good humor. “That way we can get more out of life.” But the Indian

144woman explained that the most fearsome part of the sickness of insomnia was not the impossibility

145of sleeping, for the body did not feel any fatigue at all, but its inexorable evolution toward a more

146critical manifestation: a loss of memory. She meant that when the sick person became used to his

147state of vigil, the recollection of his childhood began to be erased from his memory, then the name

148and notion of tilings, and finally the identity of people and even the awareness of his own being,

149until he sank into a kind of idiocy that had no past. Jose Arcadio Buendia, dying with laughter,

150thought that it was just a question of one of the many illnesses invented by the Indians’ supersti¬

151tions. But Ursula, just to be safe, took the precaution of isolating Rebeca from the other children.

152After several weeks, when Visitacion’s terror seemed to have died down, Jose Arcadio Buendia

153found himself rolling over in bed, unable to fall asleep. Ursula, who had also awakened, asked him

154what was wrong, and he answered: “I’m thinking about Pmdencio Aguilar again.” They did not

155sleep a minute, but the following day they felt so rested that they forgot about the bad night.

156Aureliano commented with surprise at lunchtime that he felt very well in spite of the fact that he had

157spent the whole night in the laboratory gilding a brooch that he planned to give to Ursula for her

158birthday. They did not become alarmed until the third day, when no one felt sleepy at bedtime and

159they realized that they had gone more than fifty hours without sleeping.

160“The children are awake too,” the Indian said with her fatalistic conviction. “Once it gets into a

161house no one can escape the plague. ”

162They had indeed contracted the illness of insomnia. Ursula, who had learned from her mother

163the medicinal value of plants, prepared and made them all drink a brew of monkshood, but they

164could not get to sleep and spent the whole day dreaming on their feet. In that state of hallucinated

165lucidity, not only did they see the images of their own dreams, but some saw the images dreamed by

166others. It was as if the house were full of visitors. Sitting in her rocker in a corner of the kitchen,

167Rebeca dreamed that a man who looked very much like her, dressed in white linen and with his shirt

168collar closed by a gold button, was bringing her a bouquet of roses. He was accompanied by a

169woman with delicate hands who took out one rose and put it in the child’s hair. Ursula understood

170that the man and woman were Rebeca’s parents, but even though she made a great effort to

171recognize them, she confirmed her certainty that she had never seen them. In the meantime,

172through an oversight that Jose Arcadio Buendia never forgave himself for, the candy animals made

173in the house were still being sold in the town. Children and adults sucked with delight on the

174delicious little green roosters of insomnia, the exquisite pink fish of insomnia, and the tender yellow

175ponies of insomnia, so that dawn on Monday found the whole town awake. No one was alarmed at

176first. On the contrary, they were happy at not sleeping because there was so much to do in Macondo

177in those days that there was barely enough time. They worked so hard that soon they had nothing

178else to do and they could be found at three o’clock in the morning with their arms crossed, counting

179the notes in the waltz of the clock. Those who wanted to sleep, not from fatigue but because of the

180nostalgia for dreams, tried all kinds of methods of exhausting themselves. They would gather

181together to converse endlessly, to tell over and over for hours on end the same jokes, to complicate

182to the limits of exasperation the story about the capon, which was an endless game in which the

183narrator asked if they wanted him to tell them the story about the capon, and when they answered

184yes, the narrator would say that he had not asked them to say yes, but whether they wanted him to

185tell them the story about the capon, and when they answered no, the narrator told them that he had

186not asked them to say no, but whether they wanted him to tell them the story about the capon, and

187when they remained silent the narrator told them that he had not asked them to remain silent but

188whether they wanted him to tell them the story about the capon, and no one could leave because the

189narrator would say that he had not asked them to leave but whether they wanted him to tell them

190the story about the capon, and so on and on in a vicious circle that lasted entire nights.

191When Jose Arcadio Buendia realized that the plague had invaded the town, he gathered together

192the heads of families to explain to them what he knew about the sickness of insomnia, and they

193agreed on methods to prevent the scourge from spreading to other towns in the swamp. That was

194why they took the bells off the goats, bells that the Arabs had swapped them for macaws, and put

195them at the entrance to town at the disposal of those who would not listen to the advice and

196entreaties of the sentinels and insisted on visiting the town. All strangers who passed through the

197streets of Macondo at that time had to ring their bells so that the sick people would know that they

198were healthy. They were not allowed to eat or drink anything during their stay, for there was no

199doubt but that the illness was transmitted by mouth, and all food and drink had been contaminated

200by insomnia. In that way they kept the plague restricted to the perimeter of the town. So effective

201was the quarantine that the day came when the emergency situation was accepted as a natural thing

202and life was organized in such a way that work picked up its rhythm again and no one worried any

203more about the useless habit of sleeping.

204It was Aureliano who conceived the formula that was to protect them against loss of memory for

205several months. He discovered it by chance. An expert insomniac, having been one of the first, he

206had learned the art of silverwork to perfection. One day he was looking for the small anvil that he

207used for laminating metals and he could not remember its name. His father told him: “Stake.”

208Aureliano wrote the name on a piece of paper that he pasted to the base of the small anvil: stake. In

209that way he was sure of not forgetting it in the future. It did not occur to him that this was the first

210manifestation of a loss of memory, because the object had a difficult name to remember. But a few

211days later be, discovered that he had trouble remembering almost every object in the laboratory.

212Then he marked them with their respective names so that all he had to do was read the inscription

213in order to identify them. When his father told him about his alarm at having forgotten even the

214most impressive happenings of his childhood, Aureliano explained his method to him, and Jose

215Arcadio Buendia put it into practice all through the house and later on imposed it on the whole

216village. With an inked brush he marked everything with its name: table, chair, clock, door, wall, bed, pan.

217He went to the corral and marked the animals and plants: cow, goat, pig, hen, cassava, caladium, banana.

218Little by little, studying the infinite possibilities of a loss of memory, he realized that the day might

219come when tilings would be recognized by their inscriptions but that no one would remember their

220use. Then he was more explicit. The sign that he hung on the neck of the cow was an exemplary

221proof of the way in which the inhabitants of Macondo were prepared to fight against loss of

222memory: This is the cow. She must be milked every morning so that she will produce milk, and the milk must be

223boiled in order to be mixed with coffee to make coffee and milk. Thus they went on living in a reality that was

224slipping away, momentarily captured by words, but which would escape irremediably when they

225forgot the values of the written letters.

226At the beginning of the road into the swamp they put up a sign that said MACONDO and another

227larger one on the main street that said GOD EXISTS. In all the houses keys to memorizing objects

228and feelings had been written. But the system demanded so much vigilance and moral strength that

229many succumbed to the spell of an imaginary reality, one invented by themselves, which was less

230practical for them but more comforting. Pilar Ternera was the one who contributed most to

231popularize that mystification when she conceived the trick of reading the past in cards as she had

232read the future before. By means of that recourse the insomniacs began to live in a world built on

233the uncertain alternatives of the cards, where a father was remembered faintly as the dark man who

234had arrived at the beginning of April and a mother was remembered only as the dark woman who

235wore a gold ring on her left hand, and where a birth date was reduced to the last Tuesday on which a

236lark sang in the laurel tree. Defeated by those practices of consolation, Jose Arcadio Buendia then

237decided to build the memory machine that he had desired once in order to remember the marvelous

238inventions of the gypsies. The artifact was based on the possibility of reviewing every morning, from

239beginning to end, the totality of knowledge acquired during one’s life. He conceived of it as a

240spinning dictionary that a person placed on the axis could operate by means of a lever, so that in a

241very few hours there would pass before his eyes the notions most necessary for life. He had

242succeeded in writing almost fourteen thousand entries when along the road from the swamp a

243strange-looking old man with the sad sleepers’ bell appeared, carrying a bulging suitcase tied with a

244rope and pulling a cart covered with black cloth. He went straight to the house of Jose Arcadio

245Buendia.

246Visitacion did not recognize him when she opened the door and she thought he had come with

247the idea of selling something, unaware that nothing could be sold in a town that was sinking

248irrevocably into the quicksand of forgetfulness. He was a decrepit man. Although his voice was also

249broken by uncertainty and his hands seemed to doubt the existence of things, it was evident that he

250came from the world where men could still sleep and remember. Jose Arcadio Buendia found him

251sitting in the living room fanning himself with a patched black hat as he read with compassionate

252attention the signs pasted to the walls. He greeted him with a broad show of affection, afraid that he

253had known him at another time and that he did not remember him now. But the visitor was aware

254of his falseness. He felt himself forgotten, not with the irremediable forgetfulness of the heart, but

255with a different kind of forgetfulness, which was more cmel and irrevocable and which he knew very

256well because it was the forgetfulness of death. Then he understood. He opened the suitcase

257crammed with indecipherable objects and from among then he took out a little case with many

258flasks. He gave Jose Arcadio Buendia a drink of a gentle color and the light went on in his memory.

259His eyes became moist from weeping even before he noticed himself in an absurd living room

260where objects were labeled and before he was ashamed of the solemn nonsense written on the walls,

261and even before he recognized the newcomer with a dazzling glow of joy. It was Melquiades.

262While Macondo was celebrating the recovery of its memory, Jose Arcadio Buendia and

263Melquiades dusted off their old friendship. The gypsy was inclined to stay in the town. He really had

264been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude. Repudiated by his

265tribe, having lost all of his supernatural faculties because of his faithfulness to life, he decided to take

266refuge in that corner of the world which had still not been discovered by death, dedicated to the

267operation of a daguerreotype laboratory. Jose Arcadio Buendia had never heard of that invention.

268But when he saw himself and his whole family fastened onto a sheet of iridescent metal for an

269eternity, he was mute with stupefaction. That was the date of the oxidized daguerreotype in which

270Jose Arcadio Buendia appeared with his brisdy and graying hair, his card board collar attached to his

271shirt by a copper button, and an expression of startled solemnity, whom Ursula described, dying

272with laughter, as a “frightened general.” Jose Arcadio Buendia was, in fact, frightened on that dear

273December morning when the daguerreotype was made, for he was thinking that people were slowly

274wearing away while his image would endure an a metallic plaque. Through a curious reversal of

275custom, it was Ursula who got that idea out of his head, as it was also she who forgot her ancient

276bitterness and decided that Melquiades would stay on in the house, although she never permitted

277them to make a daguerreotype of her because (according to her very words) she did not want to

278survive as a laughingstock for her grandchildren. That morning she dressed the children in their best

279clothes, powdered their faces, and gave a spoonful of marrow syrup to each one so that they would

280all remain absolutely motionless during the nearly two minutes in front of Melquiades fantastic

281camera. In the family daguerreotype, the only one that ever existed, Aureliano appeared dressed in

282black velvet between Amaranta and Rebeca. He had the same languor and the same clairvoyant look

283that he would have years later as he faced the firing squad. But he still had not sensed the

284premonition of his fate. He was an expert silversmith, praised all over the swampland for the

285delicacy of his work. In the workshop, which he shared with Melquiades’ mad laboratory, he could

286barely be heard breathing. He seemed to be taking refuge in some other time, while his father and

287the gypsy with shouts interpreted the predictions of Nostradamus amidst a noise of flasks and trays

288and the disaster of spilled acids and silver bromide that was lost in the twists and turns it gave at

289every instant. That dedication to his work, the good judgment with which he directed his attention,

290had allowed Aureliano to earn in a short time more money than Ursula had with her delicious candy

291fauna, but everybody thought it strange that he was now a full-grown man and had not known a

292woman. It was true that he had never had one.

293Several months later saw the return of Francisco the Man, as ancient vagabond who was almost

294two hundred years old and who frequently passed through Macondo distributing songs that he

295composed himself. In them Francisco the Man told in great detail the things that had happened in

296the towns along his route, from Manaure to the edge of the swamp, so that if anyone had a message

297to send or an event to make public, he would pay him two cents to include it in his repertory. That

298was how Ursula learned of the death of her mother, as a simple consequence of listening to the

299songs in the hope that they would say something about her son Jose Arcadio. Francisco the Man,

300called that because he had once defeated the devil in a duel of improvisation, and whose real name

301no one knew, disappeared from Macondo during the insomnia plague and one night he appeared

302suddenly in Catarino’s store. The whole town went to listen to him to find out what had happened

303in the world. On that occasion there arrived with him a woman who was so fat that four Indians had

304to carry her in a rocking chair, and an adolescent mulatto girl with a forlorn look who protected her

305from the sun with an umbrella. Aureliano went to Catarino’s store that night. He found Francisco

306the Man, like a monolithic chameleon, sitting in the midst of a circle of bystanders. He was singing

307the news with his old, out-of-tune voice, accompanying himself with the same archaic accordion that

308Sir Walter Raleigh had given him in the Guianas and keeping time with his great walking feet that

309were cracked from saltpeter. In front of a door at the rear through which men were going and

310coming, the matron of the rocking chair was sitting and fanning herself in silence. Catarino, with a

311felt rose behind his ear, was selling the gathering mugs of fermented cane juice, and he took

312advantage of the occasion to go over to the men and put his hand on them where he should not

313have. Toward midnight the heat was unbearable. Aureliano listened to the news to the end without

314hearing anything that was of interest to his family. He was getting ready to go home when the

315matron signaled him with her hand.

316“You go in too.” she told him. “It only costs twenty cents.”

317Aureliano threw a coin into the hopper that the matron had in her lap and went into the room

318without knowing why. The adolescent mulatto girl, with her small bitch’s teats, was naked on the

319bed. Before Aureliano sixty-three men had passed through the room that night. From being used so

320much, kneaded with sweat and sighs, the air in the room had begun to turn to mud. The girl took

321off the soaked sheet and asked Aureliano to hold it by one side. It was as heavy as a piece of canvas.

322They squeezed it, twisting it at the ends until it regained its natural weight. They turned over the mat

323and the sweat came out of the other side. Aureliano was anxious for that operation never to end. He

324knew the theoretical mechanics of love, but he could not stay on his feet because of the weakness of

325his knees, and although he had goose pimples on his burning skin he could not resist the urgent

326need to expel the weight of his bowels. When the girl finished fixing up the bed and told him to get

327undressed, he gave her a confused explanation: “They made me come in. They told me to throw

328twenty cents into the hopper and hurry up.” The girl understood his confusion. “If you throw in

329twenty cents more when you go out, you can stay a little longer,” she said softly. Aureliano got

330undressed, tormented by shame, unable to get rid of the idea that-his nakedness could not stand

331comparison with that of his brother. In spite of the girl’s efforts he felt more and more indifferent

332and terribly alone. “I’ll throw in other twenty cents,” he said with a desolate voice. The girl thanked

333him in silence. Her back was raw. Her skin was stuck to her ribs and her breathing was forced

334because of an immeasurable exhaustion. Two years before, far away from there, she had fallen asleep

335without putting out the candle and had awakened surrounded by flames. The house where she lived

336with the grandmother who had raised her was reduced to ashes. Since then her grandmother carried

337her from town to town, putting her to bed for twenty cents in order to make up the value of the

338burned house. According to the girl’s calculations, she still had ten years of seventy men per night,

339because she also had to pay the expenses of the trip and food for both of them as well as the pay of

340the Indians who carried the rocking chair. When the matron knocked on the door the second time,

341Aureliano left the room without having done anything, troubled by a desire to weep. That night he

342could not sleep, thinking about the girl, with a mixture of desire and pity. He felt an irresistible need

343to love her and protect her. At dawn, worn out by insomnia and fever, he made the calm decision to

344marry her in order to free her from the despotism of her grandmother and to enjoy all the nights of

345satisfaction that she would give the seventy men. But at ten o’clock in the morning, when he reached

346Catarino’s store, the girl had left town.

347Time mitigated his mad proposal, but it aggravated his feelings of frustration. He took refuge in

348work. He resigned himself to being a womanless man for all his life in order to hide the shame of his

349uselessness. In the meantime, Melquiades had printed on his plates everything that was printable in

350Macondo, and he left the daguerreotype laboratory to the fantasies of Jose Arcadio Buendia who

351had resolved to use it to obtain scientific proof of the existence of God. Through a complicated

352process of superimposed exposures taken in different parts of the house, he was sure that sooner or

353later he would get a daguerreotype of God, if He existed, or put an end once and for all to the

354supposition of His existence. Melquiades got deeper into his interpretations of Nostradamus. He

355would stay up until very late, suffocating in his faded velvet vest, scribbling with his tiny sparrow

356hands, whose rings had lost the glow of former times. One night he thought he had found a

357prediction of the future of Macondo. It was to be a luminous city with great glass houses where

358there was no trace remaining of the race of the Buendia. “It’s a mistake,” Jose Arcadio Buendia

359thundered. “They won’t be houses of glass but of ice, as I dreamed, and there will always be a

360Buendia, per omnia secula seculorumP Ursula fought to preserve common sense in that extravagant

361house, having broadened her business of little candy animals with an oven that went all night turning

362out baskets and more baskets of bread and a prodigious variety of puddings, meringues, and cookies,

363which disappeared in a few hours on the roads winding through the swamp. She had reached an age

364where she had a right to rest, but she was nonetheless more and more active. So busy was she in her

365prosperous enterprises that one afternoon she looked distractedly toward the courtyard while the

366Indian woman helped her sweeten the dough and she saw two unknown and beautiful adolescent

367girls doing frame embroidery in the light of the sunset. They were Rebeca and Amaranta. As soon as

368they had taken off the mourning clothes for their grandmother, which they wore with inflexible

369rigor for three years, their bright clothes seemed to have given them a new place in the world.

370Rebeca, contrary to what might have been expected, was the more beautiful. She had a light

371complexion, large and peaceful eyes, and magical hands that seemed to work out the design of the

372embroidery with invisible threads. Amaranta, the younger, was somewhat graceless, but she had the

373natural distinction, the inner tightness of her dead grandmother. Next to them, although he was

374already revealing the physical drive of his father, Arcadio looked like a child. He set about learning

375the art of silverwork with Aureliano, who had also taught him how to read and write. Ursula

376suddenly realized that the house had become full of people, that her children were on the point of