1THE NEW HOUSE, white, like a dove, was inaugurated with a dance. Ursula had got that idea from

2the afternoon when she saw Rebeca and Amaranta changed into adolescents, and it could almost

3have been said that the main reason behind the construction was a desire to have a proper place for

4the girls to receive visitors. In order that nothing would be lacking in splendor she worked like a

5galley slave as the repairs were under way, so that before they were finished she had ordered costly

6necessities for the decorations, the table service, and the marvelous invention that was to arouse the

7astonishment of the town and the jubilation of the young people: the pianola. They delivered it

8broken down, packed in several boxes that were unloaded along with the Viennese furniture, the

9Bohemian crystal, the table service from the Indies Company, the tablecloths from Holland, and a

10rich variety of lamps and candlesticks, hangings and drapes. The import house sent along at its own

11expense an Italian expert, Pietro Crespi, to assemble and tune the pianola, to instruct the purchasers

12in its functioning, and to teach them how to dance the latest music printed on its six paper rolls.

13Pietro Crespi was young and blond, the most handsome and well mannered man who had ever

14been seen in Macondo, so scrupulous in his dress that in spite of the suffocating heat he would work

15in his brocade vest and heavy coat of dark cloth. Soaked in sweat, keeping a reverent distance from

16the owners of the house, he spent several weeks shut up is the parlor with a dedication much like

17that of Aureliano in his silverwork. One morning, without opening the door, without calling anyone

18to witness the miracle, he placed the first roll in the pianola and the tormenting hammering and the

19constant noise of wooden lathings ceased in a silence that was startled at the order and neatness of

20the music. They all ran to the parlor. Jose Arcadio Buendia was as if stmck by lightning, not because

21of the beauty of the melody, but because of the automatic working of the keys of the pianola, and he

22set up Melquiades’ camera with the hope of getting a daguerreotype of the invisible player. That day

23the Italian had lunch with them. Rebeca and Amaranta, serving the table, were intimidated by the

24way in which the angelic man with pale and ringless hands manipulated the utensils. In the living

25room, next to the parlor, Pietro Crespi taught them how to dance. He showed them the steps

26without touching them, keeping time with a metronome, under the friendly eye of Ursula, who did

27not leave the room for a moment while her daughters had their lesson. Pietro Crespi wore special

28pants on those days, very elastic and tight, and dancing slippers, “You don’t have to worry so

29much,” Jose Arcadio Buendia told her. “The man’s a fairy.” But she did not leave off her vigilance

30until the apprenticeship was over and the Italian left Macondo. Then they began to organize the

31party. Ursula drew up a strict guest list, in which the only ones invited were the descendants of the

32founders, except for the family of Pilar Ternera, who by then had had two more children by

33unknown fathers. It was truly a high-class list, except that it was determined by feelings of

34friendship, for those favored were not only the oldest friends of Jose Arcadio Buendia’s house since

35before they undertook the exodus and the founding of Macondo, but also their sons and grandsons,

36who were the constant companions of Aureliano and Arcadio since infancy, and their daughters,

37who were the only ones who visited the house to embroider with Rebeca and Amaranta. Don

38Apolinar Moscote, the benevolent ruler whose activity had been reduced to the maintenance from

39his scanty resources of two policemen armed with wooden clubs, was a figurehead. In older to

40support the household expenses his daughters had opened a sewing shop, where they made felt

41flowers as well as guava delicacies, and wrote love notes to order. But in spite of being modest and

42hard-working, the most beautiful girls in Iowa, and the most skilled at the new dances, they did not

43manage to be considered for the party.

44While Ursula and the girls unpacked furniture, polished silverware, and hung pictures of maidens

45in boats full of roses, which gave a breath of new life to the naked areas that the masons had built,

46Jose Arcadio Buendia stopped his pursuit of the image of God, convinced of His nonexistence, and

47he took the pianola apart in order to decipher its magical secret. Two days before the party,

48swamped in a shower of leftover keys and hammers, bungling in the midst of a mix-up of strings

49that would unroll in one direction and roll up again in the other, he succeeded in a fashion in putting

50the instmment back together. There had never been as many surprises and as much dashing about as

51in those days, but the new pitch lamps were lighted on the designated day and hour. The house was

52opened, still smelling of resin and damp whitewash, and the children and grandchildren of the

53founders saw the porch with ferns and begonias, the quiet rooms, the garden saturated with the

54fragrance of the roses, and they gathered together in the parlor, facing the unknown invention that

55had been covered with a white sheet. Those who were familiar with the piano, popular in other

56towns in the swamp, felt a little disheartened, but more bitter was Ursula’s disappointment when she

57put in the first roll so that Amaranta and Rebeca could begin the dancing and the mechanism did

58not work. Melquiades, almost blind by then, crumbling with decrepitude, used the arts of his

59timeless wisdom in an attempt to fix it. Finally Jose Arcadio Buendia managed, by mistake, to move

60a device that was stuck and the music came out, first in a burst and then in a flow of mixed-up

61notes. Beating against the strings that had been put in without order or concert and had been tuned

62with temerity, the hammers let go. But the stubborn descendants of the twenty-one intrepid people

63who plowed through the mountains in search of the sea to the west avoided the reefs of the melodic

64mix-up and the dancing went on until dawn.

65Pietro Crespi came back to repair the pianola. Rebeca and Amaranta helped him put the strings

66in order and helped him with their laughter at the mix-up of the melodies. It was extremely pleasant

67and so chaste in its way that Ursula ceased her vigilance. On the eve of his departure a farewell

68dance for him was improvised with the pianola and with Rebeca he put on a skillful demonstration

69of modern dance, Arcadio and Amaranta matched them in grace and skill. But the exhibition was

70intermpted because Pilar Ternera, who was at the door with the onlookers, had a fight, biting and

71hair pulling, with a woman who had dared to comment that Arcadio had a woman’s behind. Toward

72midnight Pietro Crespi took his leave with a sentimental little speech, and he promised to return

73very soon. Rebeca accompanied him to the door, and having closed up the house and put out the

74lamps, she went to her room to weep. It was an inconsolable weeping that lasted for several days,

75the cause of which was not known even by Amaranta. Her hermetism was not odd. Although she

76seemed expansive and cordial, she had a solitary character and an impenetrable heart. She was a

77splendid adolescent with long and firm bones, but she still insisted on using the small wooden

78rocking chair with which she had arrived at the house, reinforced many times and with the arms

79gone. No one had discovered that even at that age she still had the habit of sucking her finger. That

80was why she would not lose an opportunity to lock herself in the bathroom and had acquired the

81habit of sleeping with her face to the wall. On rainy afternoons, embroidering with a group of

82friends on the begonia porch, she would lose the thread of the conversation and a tear of nostalgia

83would salt her palate when she saw the strips of damp earth and the piles of mud that the

84earthworms had pushed up in the garden. Those secret tastes, defeated in the past by oranges and

85rhubarb, broke out into an irrepressible urge when she began to weep. She went back to eating

86earth. The first time she did it almost out of curiosity, sure that the bad taste would be the best cure

87for the temptation. And, in fact, she could not bear the earth in her mouth. But she persevered,

88overcome by the growing anxiety, and little by little she was getting back her ancestral appetite, the

89taste of primary minerals, the unbridled satisfaction of what was the original food. She would put

90handfuls of earth in her pockets, and ate them in small bits without being seen, with a confused

91feeling of pleasure and rage, as she instmcted her girl friends in the most difficult needlepoint and

92spoke about other men, who did not deserve the sacrifice of having one eat the whitewash on the

93walls because of them. The handfuls of earth made the only man who deserved that show of

94degradation less remote and more certain, as if the ground that he walked on with his fine patent

95leather boots in another part of the world were transmitting to her the weight and the temperature

96of his blood in a mineral savor that left a harsh aftertaste in her mouth and a sediment of peace in

97her heart. One afternoon, for no reason, Amparo Moscote asked permission to see the house.

98Amaranta and Rebeca, disconcerted by the unexpected visit, attended her with a stiff formality. They

99showed her the remodeled mansion, they had her listen to the rolls on the pianola, and they offered

100her orange marmalade and crackers. Amparo gave a lesson in dignity, personal charm, and good

101manners that impressed Ursula in the few moments that she was present during the visit. After two

102hours, when the conversation was beginning to wane, Amparo took advantage of Amaranta’s

103distraction and gave Rebeca a letter. She was able to see the name of the Estimable Senorita Rebeca

104Buendia, written in the same methodical hand, with the same green ink, and the same delicacy of

105words with which the instructions for the operation of the pianola were written, and she folded the

106letter with the tips of her fingers and hid it in her bosom, looking at Amparo Moscote with an

107expression of endless and unconditional gratitude and a silent promise of complicity unto death.

108The sudden friendship between Amparo Moscote and Rebeca Buendia awakened the hopes of

109Aureliano. The memory of little Remedios had not stopped tormenting him, but he had not found a

110chance to see her. When he would stroll through town with his closest friends, Magnifico Visbal and

111Gerineldo Marquez—the sons of the founders of the same names—he would look for her in the

112sewing shop with an anxious glance, but he saw only the older sisters. The presence of Amparo

113Moscote in the house was like a premonition. “She has to come with her,” Aureliano would say to

114himself in a low voice. “She has to come.” He repeated it so many times and with such conviction

115that one afternoon when he was putting together a little gold fish in the work shop, he had the

116certainty that she had answered his call. Indeed, a short time later he heard the childish voice, and

117when he looked up his heart froze with terror as he saw the girl at the door, dressed in pink organdy

118and wearing white boots.

119“You can’t go in there, Remedios, Amparo Moscote said from the hall. They’re working.”

120But Aureliano did not give her time to respond. He picked up the little fish by the chain that

121came through its mouth and said to her.

122“Come in.”

123Remedios went over and asked some questions about the fish that Aureliano could not answer

124because he was seized with a sudden attack of asthma. He wanted to stay beside that lily skin

125forever, beside those emerald eyes, close to that voice that called him “sir” with every question,

126showing the same respect that she gave her father. Melquiades was in the corner seated at the desk

127scribbling indecipherable signs. Aureliano hated him. All he could do was tell Remedios that he was

128going to give her the little fish and the girl was so startled by the offer that she left the workshop as

129fast as she could. That afternoon Aureliano lost the hidden patience with which he had waited for a

130chance to see her. He neglected his work. In several desperate efforts of concentration he willed her

131to appear but Remedios did not respond. He looked for her in her sisters’ shop, behind the window

132shades in her house, in her father’s office, but he found her only in the image that saturated his

133private and terrible solitude. He would spend whole hours with Rebeca in the parlor listening to the

134music on the pianola. She was listening to it because it was the music with which Pietro Crespi had

135taught them how to dance. Aureliano listened to it simply because everything, even music, reminded

136him of Remedios.

137The house became full of loves Aureliano expressed it in poetry that had no beginning or end.

138He would write it on the harsh pieces of parchment that Melquiades gave him, on the bathroom

139walls, on the skin of his arms, and in all of it Remedios would appear transfigured: Remedios in the

140soporific air of two in the afternoon, Remedios in the soft breath of the roses, Remedios in the

141water-clock secrets of the moths, Remedios in the steaming morning bread, Remedios everywhere

142and Remedios forever. Rebeca waited for her love at four in the afternoon, embroidering by the

143window. She knew that the mailman’s mule arrived only every two weeks, but she always waited for

144him, convinced that he was going to arrive on some other day by mistake. It happened quite the

145opposite: once the mule did not come on the usual day. Mad with desperation, Rebeca got up in the

146middle of the night and ate handfuls of earth in the garden with a suicidal drive, weeping with pain

147and fury, chewing tender earthworms and chipping her teeth on snail shells. She vomited until dawn.

148She fell into a state of feverish prostration, lost consciousness, and her heart went into a shameless

149delirium. Ursula, scandalized, forced the lock on her trunk and found at the bottom, tied together

150with pink ribbons, the sixteen perfumed letters and the skeletons of leaves and petals preserved in

151old books and the dried butterflies that turned to powder at the touch.

152Aureliano was the only one capable of understanding such desolation. That afternoon, while

153Ursula was trying to rescue Rebeca from the slough of delirium, he went with Magnifico Visbal and

154Gerineldo Marquez to Catarino’s store. The establishment had been expanded with a gallery of

155wooden rooms where single women who smelled of dead flowers lived. A group made up of an

156accordion and dmms played the songs of Francisco the Man, who had not been seen in Macondo

157for several years. The three friends drank fermented cane juice. Magnifico and Gerineldo,

158contemporaries of Aureliano but more skilled in the ways of the world, drank methodically with the

159women seated on their laps. One of the women, withered and with goldwork on her teeth, gave

160Aureliano a caress that made him shudder. He rejected her. He had discovered that the more he

161drank the more he thought about Remedios, but he could bear the torture of his recollections better.

162He did not know exactly when he began to float. He saw his friends and the women sailing in a

163radiant glow, without weight or mass, saying words that did not come out of their mouths and

164making mysterious signals that did not correspond to their expressions. Catarino put a hand on his

165shoulder and said to him: “It’s going on eleven.” Aureliano turned his head, saw the enormous

166disfigured face with a felt flower behind the ear, and then he lost his memory, as during the times of

167forgetfulness, and he recovered it on a strange dawn and in a room that was completely foreign,

168where Pilar Ternera stood in her slip, barefoot, her hair down, holding a lamp over him, starded

169with disbelief.

170“Aureliano!”

171Aureliano checked his feet and raised his head. He did not know how he had come there, but he

172knew what his aim was, because he had carried it hidden since infancy in an inviolable backwater of

173his heart.

174“I’ve come to sleep with you,” he said.

175His clothes were smeared with mud and vomit. Pilar Ternera, who lived alone at that time with

176her two younger children, did not ask him any quesdons. She took him to the bed. She cleaned his

177face with a damp cloth, took of his clothes, and then got completely undressed and lowered the

178mosquito netting so that her children would not see them if they woke up. She had become dred of

179waiting for the man who would stay, of the men who left, of the countless men who missed the road

180to her house, confused by the uncertainty of the cards. During the wait her skin had become

181wrinkled, her breasts had withered, the coals of her heart had gone out. She felt for Aureliano in the

182darkness, put her hand on his stomach and kissed him on the neck with a maternal tenderness. “My

183poor child,” she murmured. Aureliano shuddered. With a calm skill, without the slightest misstep, he

184left his accumulated grief behind and found Remedios changed into a swamp without horizons,

185smelling of a raw animal and recendy ironed clothes. When he came to the surface he was weeping.

186First they were involuntary and broken sobs. Then he emptied himself out in an unleashed flow,

187feeling that something swollen and painful had burst inside of him. She waited, snatching his head

188with the tips of her fingers, until his body got rid of the dark material that would not let him live.

189They Pilar Ternera asked him: “Who is it?” And Aureliano told her. She let out a laugh that in other

190times frightened the doves and that now did not even wake up the children. “You’ll have to raise her

191first,” she mocked, but underneath the mockery Aureliano found a reservoir of understanding.

192When he went out of the room, leaving behind not only his doubts about his virility but also the

193bitter weight that his heart had borne for so many months. Pilar Ternera made him a spontaneous

194promise.

195“I’m going to talk to the girl,” she told him, “and you’ll see what I’ll serve her on the tray.”

196She kept her promise. But it was a bad moment, because the house had lost its peace of former

197days. When she discovered Rebeca’s passion, which was impossible to keep secret because of her

198shouts, Amaranta suffered an attack of fever. She also suffered from the barb of a lonely love. Shut

199up in the bathroom, she would release herself from the torment of a hopeless passion by writing

200feverish letters, which she finally hid in the bottom of her trunk. Ursula barely had the strength to

201take care of the two sick girls. She was unable, after prolonged and insidious interrogations, to

202ascertain the causes of Amaranta’s prostration. Finally, in another moment of inspiration, she forced

203the lock on the trunk and found the letters tied with a pink ribbon, swollen with fresh lilies and still

204wet with tears, addressed and never sent to Pietro Crespi. Weeping with rage, she cursed the day that

205it had occurred to her to buy the pianola, and she forbade the embroidery lessons and decreed a

206kind of mourning with no one dead which was to be prolonged until the daughters got over their

207hopes. Useless was the intervention of Jose Arcadio Buendia, who had modified his first impression

208of Pietro Crespi and admired his ability in the manipulation of musical machines. So that when Pilar

209Ternera told Aureliano that Remedios had decided on marriage, he could see that the news would

210only give his parents more trouble. Invited to the parlor for a formal interview, Jose Arcadio

211Buendia and Ursula listened stonily to their son’s declaration. When he learned the name of the

212fiancee, however, Jose Arcadio Buendia grew red with indignation. “Love is a disease,” he

213thundered. “With so many pretty and decent girls around, the only tiling that occurs to you is to get

214married to the daughter of our enemy.” But Ursula agreed with the choice. She confessed her

215affection for the seven Moscote sisters, for their beauty, their ability for work, their modesty, and

216their good manners, and she celebrated her son’s prudence. Conquered by his wife’s enthusiasm,

217Jose Arcadio Buendia then laid down one condition: Rebeca, who was the one he wanted, would

218marry Pietro Crespi. Ursula would take Amaranta on a trip to the capital of the province when she

219had time, so that contact with different people would alleviate her disappointment. Rebeca got her

220health back just as soon as she heard of the agreement, and she wrote her fiance a jubilant letter that

221she submitted to her parents’ approval and put into the mail without the use of any intermediaries.

222Amaranta pretended to accept the decision and little by little she recovered from her fevers, but she

223promised herself that Rebeca would marry only over her dead body.

224The following Saturday Jose Arcadio Buendia put on his dark suit, his celluloid collar, and the

225deerskin boots that he had worn for the first time the night of the party, and went to ask for the

226hand of Remedios Moscote. The magistrate and his wife received him, pleased and worried at the

227same time, for they did not know the reason for the unexpected visit, and then they thought that he

228was confused about the name of the intended bride. In order to remove the mistake, the mother

229woke Remedios up and carried her into the living room, still drowsy from sleep. They asked her if it

230was tme that she had decided to get married, and she answered, whimpering, that she only wanted

231them to let her sleep. Jose Arcadio Buendia, understanding the distress of the Moscotes, went to

232clear things up with Aureliano. When he returned, the Moscotes had put on formal clothing, had

233rearranged the furniture and put fresh flowers in the vases, and were waiting in the company of their

234older daughters. Overwhelmed by the unpleasantness of the occasion and the bothersome hard

235collar, Jose Arcadio Buendia confirmed the fact that Remedios, indeed, was the chosen one. “It

236doesn’t make sense,” Don Apolinar Moscote said with consternation. “We have six other daughters,

237all unmarried, and at an age where they deserve it, who would be delighted to be the honorable wife

238of a gentleman as serious and hard-working as your son, and Aurelito lays his eyes precisely on the

239one who still wets her bed.” His wife, a well-preserved woman with afflicted eyelids and expression,

240scolded his mistake. When they finished the fruit punch, they willingly accepted Aureliano’s

241decision. Except that Senora Moscote begged the favor of speaking to Ursula alone. Intrigued,

242protesting that they were involving her in men’s affairs, but really feeling deep emotion, Ursula went

243to visit her the next day. A half hour later she returned with the news that Remedios had not

244reached puberty. Aureliano did not consider that a serious barrier. He had waited so long that he

245could wait as long as was necessary until his bride reached the age of conception.

246The newfound harmony was interrupted by the death of Melquiades. Although it was a

247foreseeable event, the circumstances were not. A few months after his return, a process of aging had

248taken place in him that was so rapid and critical that soon he was treated as one of those useless

249great-grandfathers who wander about the bedrooms like shades, dragging their feet, remembering

250better times aloud, and whom no one bothers about or remembers really until the morning they find

251them dead in their bed. At first Jose Arcadio Buendfa helped him in his work, enthusiastic over the

252novelty of the daguerreotypes and the predictions of Nostradamus. But little by little he began

253abandoning him to his solitude, for communication was becoming Increasingly difficult. He was

254losing his sight and his hearing, he seemed to confuse the people he was speaking to with others he

255had known in remote epochs of mankind, and he would answer questions with a complex

256hodgepodge of languages. He would walk along groping in the air, although he passed between

257objects with an inexplicable fluidity, as if be were endowed with some instinct of direction based on

258an immediate prescience. One day he forgot to put in his false teeth, which at night he left in a glass

259of water beside his bed, and he never put them in again. When Ursula undertook the enlargement of

260the house, she had them build him a special room next to Aureliano’s workshop, far from the noise

261and bustle of the house, with a window flooded with light and a bookcase where she herself put in

262order the books that were almost destroyed by dust and moths, the flaky stacks of paper covered

263with indecipherable signs, and the glass with his false teeth, where some aquatic plants with tiny

264yellow flowers had taken root. The new place seemed to please Melquiades, because he was never

265seen any more, not even in the dining room, He only went to Aureliano’s workshop, where he

266would spend hours on end scribbling his enigmatic literature on the parchments that he had brought

267with him and that seemed to have been made out of some dry material that crumpled like puff paste.

268There he ate the meals that Visitacion brought him twice a day, although in the last days he lost his

269appetite and fed only on vegetables. He soon acquired the forlorn look that one sees in vegetarians.

270His skin became covered with a thin moss, similar to that which flourished on the antique vest that

271he never took off, and his breath exhaled the odor of a sleeping animal. Aureliano ended up forget¬

272ting about him, absorbed in the composition of his poems, but on one occasion he thought he

273understood something of what Melquiades was saying in his groping monologues, and he paid

274attention. In reality, the only tiling that could be isolated in the rocky paragraphs was the insistent

275hammering on the word equinox, equinox, equinox , and the name of Alexander von Humboldt.

276Arcadio got a little closer to him when he began to help Aureliano in his silverwork. Melquiades

277answered that effort at communication at times by giving forth with phrases in Spanish that had very

278little to do with reality. One afternoon, however, he seemed to be illuminated by a sudden emotion.

279Years later, facing the firing squad, Arcadio would remember the trembling with which Melquiades

280made him listen to several pages of his impenetrable writing, which of course he did not understand,

281but which when read aloud were like encyclicals being chanted. Then he smiled for the first time in a

282long while and said in Spanish: “When I die, burn mercury in my room for three days.” Arcadio told

283that to Jose Arcadio Buendfa and the latter tried to get more explicit information, but he received

284only one answer: “I have found immortality.” When Melquiades’ breathing began to smell, Arcadio

285took him to bathe in the river on Thursday mornings. He seemed to get better. He would undress

286and get into the water with the boys, and his mysterious sense of orientation would allow him to

287avoid the deep and dangerous spots. “We come from the water,” he said on a certain occasion.

288Much time passed in that way without anyone’s seeing him in the house except on the night when

289he made a pathetic effort to fix the pianola, and when he would go to the river with Arcadio,

290carrying under his arm a gourd and a bar of palm oil soap wrapped in a towel. One Thursday before

291they called him to go to the river, Aureliano heard him say: “I have died of fever on the dunes of

292Singapore.” That day he went into the water at a bad spot and they did not find him until the

293following day, a few miles downstream, washed up on a bright bend in the river and with a solitary

294vulture sitting on his stomach. Over the scandalized protests of Ursula, who wept with more grief

295than she had had for her own father, Jose Arcadio Buendia was opposed to their burying him. “He

296is immortal,” he said, “and he himself revealed the formula of his resurrection.” He brought out the

297forgotten water pipe and put a kettle of mercury to boil next to the body, which little by little was

298filling with blue bubbles. Don Apolinar Moscote ventured to remind him that an unburied drowned

299man was a danger to public health. “None of that, because he’s alive,” was the answer of Jose

300Arcadio Buendia, who finished the seventy-two hours with the mercurial incense as the body was

301already beginning to burst with a livid fluorescence, the soft whistles of which impregnated the

302house with a pestilential vapor. Only then did he permit them to bury him, not in any ordinary way,

303but with the honors reserved for Macondo’s greatest benefactor. It was the first burial and the best-

304attended one that was ever seen in the town, only surpassed, a century later, by Big Mama’s funeral

305carnival. They buried him in a grave dug in the center of the plot destined for the cemetery, with a

306stone on which they wrote the only thing they knew about him: MELQUIADES. They gave him his

307nine nights of wake. In the tumult that gathered in the courtyard to drink coffee, tell jokes, and play

308cards. Amaranta found a chance to confess her love to Pietro Crespi, who a few weeks before had

309formalized his promise to Rebeca and had set up a store for musical instruments and mechanical

310toys in the same section where the Arabs had lingered in other times swapping knickknacks for

311macaws, and which the people called the Street of the Turks. The Italian, whose head covered with

312patent leather curls aroused in women an irrepressible need to sigh, dealt with Amaranta as with a

313capricious little girl who was not worth taking seriously.

314“I have a younger brother,” he told her. “He’s coming to help me in the store.”

315Amaranta felt humiliated and told Pietro Crespi with a virulent anger that she was prepared to

316stop her sister’s wedding even if her own dead body had to lie across the door. The Italian was so

317impressed by the dramatics of the threat that he could not resist the temptation to mention it to

318Rebeca. That was how Amaranta’s trip, always put off by Ursula’s work, was arranged in less than a

319week. Amaranta put up no resistance, but when she kissed Rebeca good-bye she whispered in her

320ear:

321“Don’t get your hopes up. Even if they send me to the ends of the earth I’ll find some way of

322stopping you from getting married, even if I have to kill you. ”

323With the absence of Ursula, with the invisible presence of Melquiades, who continued his stealthy

324shuffling through the rooms, the house seemed enormous and empty. Rebeca took charge of

325domestic order, while the Indian woman took care of the bakery. At dusk, when Pietro Crespi would

326arrive, preceded by a cool breath of lavender and always bringing a toy as a gift, his fiancee would

327receive the visitor in the main parlor with doors and windows open to be safe from any suspicion. It

328was an unnecessary precaution, for the Italian had shown himself to be so respectful that he did not

329even touch the hand of the woman who was going to be his wife within the year. Those visits were

330filling the house with remarkable toys. Mechanical ballerinas, music boxes, acrobatic monkeys,

331trotting horses, clowns who played the tambourine: the rich and startling mechanical fauna that

332Pietro Crespi brought dissipated Jose Arcadio Buendia’s affliction over the death of Melquiades and

333carried him back to his old days as an alchemist. He lived at that time in a paradise of disemboweled

334animals, of mechanisms that had been taken apart in an attempt to perfect them with a system of

335perpetual motion based upon the principles of the pendulum. Aureliano, for his part, had neglected

336the workshop in order to teach little Remedios to read and write. At first the child preferred her

337dolls to the man who would come every afternoon and who was responsible for her being separated

338from her toys in order to be bathed and dressed and seated in the parlor to receive the visitor. But

339Aureliano’s patience and devotion finally won her over, up to the point where she would spend

340many hours with him studying the meaning of the letters and sketching in a notebook with colored

341pencils little houses with cows in the corral and round suns with yellow rays that hid behind the hills.

342Only Rebeca was unhappy, because of Amaranta’s threat. She knew her sister’s character, the

343haughtiness of her spirit, and she was frightened by the virulence of her anger. She would spend

344whole hours sucking her finger in the bathroom, holding herself back with an exhausting iron will so

345as not to eat earth. In search of some relief for her uncertainty, she called Pilar Ternera to read her

346future. After a string of conventional vagaries, Pilar Ternera predicted:

347“You will not be happy as long as your parents remain unburied.”

348Rebeca shuddered. As in the memory of a dream she saw herself entering the house as a very

349small girl, with the trunk and the little rocker, and a bag whose contents she had never known. She

350remembered a bald gentleman dressed in linen and with his collar closed by a gold button, who had

351nothing to do with the king of hearts. She remembered a very young and beautiful woman with

352warm and perfumed hands, who had nothing in common with the jack of diamonds and Inis

353rheumatic hands, and who used to put flowers in her hair and take her out walking in the afternoon

354through a town with green streets.

355“I don’t understand,” she said.

356Pilar Ternera seemed disconcerted:

357“I don’t either, but that’s what the cards say.”

358Rebeca was so preoccupied with the enigma that she told it to Jose Arcadio Buendia, and he

359scolded her for believing in the predictions of the cards, but he undertook the silent task of

360searching closets and trunks, moving furniture and turning over beds and floorboards looking for

361the bag of bones. He remembered that he had not seen it since the time of the rebuilding. He

362secretly summoned the masons and one of them revealed that he had walled up the bag in some

363bedroom because it bothered him in his work. After several days of listening, with their ears against

364the walls, they perceived the deep cloc-cloc. They penetrated the wall and there were the bones in the

365intact bag. They buried it the same day in a grave without a stone next to that of Melquiades, and

366Jose Arcadio Buendia returned home free of a burden that for a moment had weighed on his

367conscience as much as the memory of Prudencio Aguilar. When he went through the kitchen he

368kissed Rebeca on the forehead.

369“Get those bad thoughts out of your head,” he told her. “You’re going to be happy.”

370The friendship with Rebeca opened up to Pilar Ternera the doors of the house, closed by Ursula

371since the birth of Arcadio. She would arrive at any hour of the day, like a flock of goats, and would

372unleash her feverish energy in the hardest tasks. Sometimes she would go into the workshop and

373help Arcadio sensitize the daguerreotype plates with an efficiency and a tenderness that ended up by

374confusing him. That woman bothered him. The tan of her skin, her smell of smoke, the disorder of

375her laughter in the darkroom distracted his attention and made him bump into things.

376On a certain occasion Aureliano was there working on his silver, and Pilar Ternera leaned over

377the table to admire his laborious patience. Suddenly it happened. Aureliano made sure that Arcadio

378was in the darkroom before raising his eyes and meeting those of Pilar Ternera, whose thought was

379perfectly visible, as if exposed to the light of noon.

380“Well,” Aureliano said. “Tell me what it is.”

381Pilar Ternera bit her lips with a sad smile.

382“That you’d be good in a war,” she said. “Where you put your eye, you put your bullet.”

383Aureliano relaxed with the proof of the omen. He went back to concentrate on his work as if

384nothing had happened, and his voice took on a restful strength.

385“I will recognize him,” he said. “He’ll bear my name.”

386Jose Arcadio Buendia finally got what he was looking for: he connected the mechanism of the

387clock to a mechanical ballerina, and the toy danced uninterruptedly to the rhythm of her own music

388for three days. That discovery excited him much more than any of his other harebrained

389undertakings. He stopped eating. He stopped sleeping. Only the vigilance and care of Rebeca kept

390him from being dragged off by his imagination into a state of perpetual delirium from which he

391would not recover. He would spend the nights walking around the room thinking aloud, searching

392for a way to apply the principles of the pendulum to oxcarts, to harrows, to everything that was

393useful when put into motion. The fever of insomnia fatigued him so much that one dawn he could