1AURELIANO DID NOT leave Melquiades’ room for a long time. He learned by heart the fantastic

2legends of the crumbling books, the synthesis of the studies of Hermann the Cripple, the notes on

3the science of demonology, the keys to the philosopher’s stone, the Centuries of Nostradamus and his

4research concerning the plague, so that he reached adolescence without knowing a tiling about his

5own time but with the basic knowledge of a medieval man. Any time that Santa Sofia de la Piedad

6would go into his room she would find him absorbed in his reading. At dawn she would bring him a

7mug of coffee without sugar and at noon a plate of rice and slices of fried plantain, which were the

8only things eaten in the house since the death of Aureliano Segundo. She saw that his hair was cut,

9picked off the nits, took in to his size the old clothing that she found in forgotten tmnks, and when

10his mustache began to appear the brought him Colonel Aureliano Buendia’s razor and the small

11gourd he had used as a shaving mug. None of the latter’s children had looked so much like him, not

12even Aureliano Jose, particularly in respect to the prominent cheekbones and the firm and rather

13pitiless line of the lips. As had happened to Ursula with Aureliano Segundo when the latter was

14studying in the room, Santa Sofia de la Piedad thought that Aureliano was talking to himself.

15Actually, he was talking to Melquiades. One burning noon, a short time after the death of the twins,

16against the light of the window he saw the gloomy old man with his crow’s-wing hat like the

17materialization of a memory that had been in his head since long before he was born. Aureliano had

18finished classifying the alphabet of the parchments, so that when Melquiades asked him if he had

19discovered the language in which they had been written he did not hesitate to answer.

20“Sanskrit,” he said.

21Melquiades revealed to him that his opportunities to return to the room were limited. But he

22would go in peace to the meadows of the ultimate death because Aureliano would have time to learn

23Sanskrit during the years remaining until the parchments became one hundred years old, when they

24could be deciphered. It was he who indicated to Aureliano that on the narrow street going down to

25the river, where dreams had been interpreted during the time of the banana company, a wise

26Catalonian had a bookstore where there was a Sanskrit primer, which would be eaten by the moths

27within six years if he did not hurry to buy it. For the first time in her long life Santa Sofia de la

28Piedad let a feeling show through, and it was a feeling of wonderment when Aureliano asked her to

29bring him the book that could be found between Jerusalem Delivered and Milton’s poems on the

30extreme right-hand side of the second shelf of the bookcases. Since she could not read, she memo¬

31rized what he had said and got some money by selling one of the seventeen little gold fishes left in

32the workshop, the whereabouts of which, after being hidden the night the soldiers searched the

33house, was known only by her and Aureliano.

34Aureliano made progress in his studies of Sanskrit as Melquiades’ visits became less and less

35frequent and he was more distant, fading away in the radiant light of noon. The last time that

36Aureliano sensed him he was only an invisible presence who murmured: “I died of fever on the

37sands of Singapore.” The room then became vulnerable to dust, heat, termites, red ants, and moths,

38who would turn the wisdom of the parchments into sawdust.

39There was no shortage of food in the house. The day after the death of Aureliano Segundo, one

40of the friends who had brought the wreath with the irreverent inscription offered to pay Fernanda

41some money that he had owed her husband. After that every Wednesday a delivery boy brought a

42basket of food that was quite sufficient for a week. No one ever knew that those provisions were

43being sent by Petra Cotes with the idea that the continuing charity was a way of humiliating the

44person who had humiliated her. Nevertheless, the rancor disappeared much sooner than she herself had expected, and then she continued sending the food out of pride and finally out of compassion.

45Several times, when she had no animals to raffle off and people lost interest in the lottery, she went

46without food so that Fernanda could have something to eat, and she continued fulfilling the pledge

47to herself until she saw Fernanda’s funeral procession pass by.

48For Santa Sofia de la Piedad the reduction in the number of inhabitants of the house should have

49meant the rest she deserved after more than half a century of work. Never a lament had been heard

50from that stealthy, impenetrable woman who had sown in the family the angelic seed of Remedios

51the Beauty and the mysterious solemnity of Jose Arcadio Segundo; who dedicated a whole life of

52solitude and diligence to the rearing of children although she could barely remember whether they

53were her children or grandchildren, and who took care of Aureliano as if he had come out of her

54womb, not knowing herself that she was his great-grandmother. Only in a house like that was it

55conceivable for her always to sleep on a mat she laid out on the pantry floor in the midst of the

56nocturnal noise of the rats, and without telling anyone that one night she had awakened with the

57frightened feeling that someone was looking at her in the darkness and that it was a poisonous snake

58crawling over her stomach. She knew that if she had told Ursula, the latter would have made her

59sleep in her own bed, but those were times when no one was aware of anything unless it was

60shouted on the porch, because with the bustle of the bakery, the surprises of the war, the care of the

61children, there was not much room for thinking about other peoples happiness. Petra Cotes whom

62she had never seen, was the only one who remembered her. She saw to it that she had a good pair of

63shoes for street wear, that she always had clothing, even during the times when the raffles were

64working only through some miracle. When Fernanda arrived at the house she had good reason to

65think that she was an ageless servant, and even though she heard it said several times that she was

66her husband’s mother it was so incredible that it took her longer to discover it than to forget it.

67Santa Sofia de la Piedad never seemed bothered by that lowly position. On the contrary, one had the

68impression that she liked to stay in the corners, without a pause, without a complaint, keeping clean

69and in order the immense house that she had lived in ever since adolescence and that, especially

70during the time of the banana company, was more like a barracks than a home. But when Ursula

71died the superhuman diligence of Santa Sofia de la Piedad, her tremendous capacity for work, began

72to fall apart. It was not only that she was old and exhausted, but overnight the house had plunged

73into a crisis of senility. A soft moss grew up the walls. When there was no longer a bare spot in the

74courtyard, the weeds broke through the cement of the porch, breaking it like glass, and out of the

75cracks grew the same yellow flowers that Ursula had found in the glass with Melquiades’ false teeth a

76century before. With neither the time nor the resources to halt the challenge of nature, Santa Sofia

77de la Piedad spent the day in the bedrooms driving out the lizards who would return at night. One

78morning she saw that the red ants had left the undermined foundations, crossed the garden, climbed

79up the railing, where the begonias had taken on an earthen color, and had penetrated into the heart

80of the house. She first tried to kill them with a broom, then with insecticides, and finally with lye, but

81the next day they were back in the same place, still passing by, tenacious and invincible. Fernanda,

82writing letters to her children, was not aware of the unchecked destructive attack. Santa Sofia de la

83Piedad continued struggling alone, fighting the weeds to stop them from getting into the kitchen,

84pulling from the walls the tassels of spider webs which were rebuilt in a few hours, scraping off the

85termites. But when she saw that Melquiades’ room was also dusty and filled with cobwebs even

86though she swept and dusted three times a day, and that in spite of her furious cleaning it was

87threatened by the debris and the air of misery that had been foreseen only by Colonel Aureliano

88Buendia and the young officer, she realized that she was defeated. Then she put on her worn Sunday

89dress, some old shoes of Ursula’s, and a pair of cotton stockings that Amaranta Ursula had given

90her, and she made a bundle out of the two or three changes of clothing that she had left.

91“I give up,” she said to Aureliano. “This is too much house for my poor bones.”

92Aureliano asked her where she was going and she made a vague sign, as if she did not have the

93slightest idea of her destination. She tried to be more precise, however, saying that she was going to

94spend her last years with a first cousin who lived in Riohacha. It was not a likely explanation. Since

95the death of her parents she had not had contact with anyone in town or received letters or

96messages, nor had she been heard to speak of any relatives. Aureliano gave her fourteen little gold

97fishes because she was determined to leave with only what she had: one peso and twenty-five cents.

98From the window of the room he saw her cross the courtyard with her bundle of clothing, dragging

99her feet and bent over by her years, and he saw her reach her hand through an opening in the main

100door and replace the bar after she had gone out. Nothing was ever heard of her again.

101When she heard about the flight, Fernanda ranted for a whole day as she checked trunks,

102dressers, and closets, item by item, to make sure that Santa Sofia de la Piedad had not made off with

103anything. She burned her fingers trying to light a fire for the first time in her life and she had to ask

104Aureliano to do her the favor of showing her how to make coffee. Fernanda would find her

105breakfast ready when she arose and she would leave her room again only to get the meal that

106Aureliano had left covered on the embers for her, which she would carry to the table to eat on linen

107tablecloths and between candelabra, sitting at the solitary head of the table facing fifteen empty

108chairs. Even under those circumstances Aureliano and Fernanda did not share their solitude, but

109both continued living on their own, cleaning their respective rooms while the cobwebs fell like snow

110on the rose bushes, carpeted the beams, cushioned the walls. It was around that time that Fernanda

111got the impression that the house was filling up with elves. It was as if things, especially those for

112everyday use, had developed a faculty for changing location on their own. Fernanda would waste

113time looking for the shears that she was sure she had put on the bed and after turning everything

114upside down she would find them on a shelf in the kitchen, where she thought she had not been for

115four days. Suddenly there was no fork in the silver chest and she would find six on the altar and

116three in the washroom. That wandering about of things was even more exasperating when she sat

117down to write. The inkwell that she had placed at her right would be on the left, the blotter would

118be lost and she would find it two days later under her pillow, and the pages written to Jose Arcadio

119would get mixed up with those written to Amaranta Ursula, and she always had the feeling of

120mortification that she had put the letters in opposite envelopes, as in fact happened several times.

121On one occasion she lost her fountain pen. Two weeks later the mailman, who had found it in his

122bag, returned it. He had been going from house to house looking for its owner. At first she thought

123it was some business of the invisible doctors, like the disappearance of the pessaries, and she even

124started a letter to them begging them to leave her alone, but she had to interrupt it to do something

125and when she went back to her room she not only did not find the letter she had started but she had

126forgotten the reason for writing it. For a time she thought it was Aureliano. She began to spy on

127him, to put things in his path trying to catch him when he changed their location, but she was soon

128convinced that Aureliano never left Melquiades’ room except to go to the kitchen or the toilet, and

129that he was not a man to play tricks. So in the end she believed that it was the mischief of elves and

130she decided to secure everything in the place where she would use it. She tied the shears to the head

131of her bed with a long string. She tied the pen and the blotter to the leg of the table, and the glued

132the inkwell to the top of it to the right of the place where she normally wrote. The problems were

133not solved overnight, because a few hours after she had tied the string to the shears it was not long

134enough for her to cut with, as if the elves had shortened it. The same tiling happened to her with the

135string to the pen and even with her own arm which after a short time of writing could not reach the

136inkwell. Neither Amaranta Ursula in Brussels nor Jose Arcadio in Rome ever heard about those

137insignificant misfortunes. Fernanda told them that she was happy and in reality she was, precisely

138because she felt free from any compromise, as if life were pulling her once more toward the world

139of her parents, where one did not suffer with day-to-day problems because they were solved beforehand in one’s imagination. That endless correspondence made her lose her sense of time,

140especially after Santa Sofia de la Piedad had left. She had been accustomed to keep track of the days,

141months, and years, using as points of reference the dates set for the return of her children. But when

142they changed their plans time and time again, the dates became confused, the periods were mislaid,

143and one day seemed so much like another that one could not feel them pass. Instead of becoming

144impatient, she felt a deep pleasure in the delay. It did not worry her that many years after

145announcing the eve of his final vows, Jose Arcadio was still saying that he was waiting to finish his

146studies in advanced theology in order to undertake those in diplomacy, because she understood how

147steep and paved with obstacles was the spiral stairway that led to the throne of Saint Peter. On the

148other hand, her spirits rose with news that would have been insignificant for other people, such as

149the fact that her son had seen the Pope. She felt a similar pleasure when Amaranta Ursula wrote to

150tell her that her studies would last longer than the time foreseen because her excellent grades had

151earned her privileges that her father had not taken into account in his calculations.

152More than three years had passed since Santa Sofia de la Piedad had brought him the grammar

153when Aureliano succeeded in translating the first sheet. It was not a useless chore, but it was only a

154first step along a road whose length it was impossible to predict, because the text in Spanish did not

155mean anything: the lines were in code. Aureliano lacked the means to establish the keys that would

156permit him to dig them out, but since Melquiades had told him that the books he needed to get to

157the bottom of the parchments were in the wise Catalonian’s store, he decided to speak to Fernanda

158so that she would let him get them. In the room devoured by rubble, whose unchecked proliferation

159had finally defeated it, he thought about the best way to frame the request, but when he found

160Fernanda taking her meal from the embers, which was his only chance to speak to her, the

161laboriously formulated request stuck in his throat and he lost his voice. That was the only time that

162he watched her. He listened to her steps in the bedroom. He heard her on her way to the door to

163await the letters from her children and to give hers to the mailman, and he listened until late at night

164to the harsh, impassioned scratching of her pen on the paper before hearing the sound of the light

165switch and the murmur of her prayers in the darkness. Only then did he go to sleep, trusting that on

166the following day the awaited opportunity would come. He became so inspired with the idea that

167permission would be granted that one morning he cut his hair, which at that time reached down to

168his shoulders, shaved off his tangled beard, put on some tight-fitting pants and a shirt with an

169artificial collar that he had inherited from he did not know whom, and waited in the kitchen for

170Fernanda to get her breakfast. The woman of every day, the one with her head held high and with a

171stony gait, did not arrive, but an old woman of supernatural beauty with a yellowed ermine cape, a

172crown of gilded cardboard, and the languid look of a person who wept in secret. Actually, ever since

173she had found it in Aureliano Segundo’s trunks, Fernanda had put on the moth-eaten queen’s dress

174many times. Anyone who could have seen her in front of the mirror, in ecstasy over her own regal

175gestures, would have had reason to think that she was mad. But she was not. She had simply turned

176the royal regalia into a device for her memory. The first time that she put it on she could not help a

177knot from forming in her heart and her eyes filling with tears because at that moment she smelled

178once more the odor of shoe polish on the boots of the officer who came to get her at her house to

179make her a queen, and her soul brightened with the nostalgia of her lost dreams. She felt so old, so

180worn out, so far away from the best moments of her life that she even yearned for those that she

181remembered as the worst, and only then did she discover how much she missed the whiff of

182oregano on the porch and the smell of the roses at dusk, and even the bestial nature of the parvenus.

183Her heart of compressed ash, which had resisted the most telling blows of daily reality without

184strain, fell apart with the first waves of nostalgia. The need to feel sad was becoming a vice as the

185years eroded her. She became human in her solitude. Nevertheless, the morning on which she

186entered the kitchen and found a cup of coffee offered her by a pale and bony adolescent with a hallucinated glow in his eyes, the claws of ridicule tore at her. Not only did she refuse him

187permission, but from then on she carried the keys to the house in the pocket where she kept the

188unused pessaries. It was a useless precaution because if he had wanted to, Aureliano could have

189escaped and even returned to the house without being seen. But the prolonged captivity, the

190uncertainty of the world, the habit of obedience had dried up the seeds of rebellion in his heart. So

191that he went back to his enclosure, reading and rereading the parchments and listening until very late

192at night to Fernanda sobbing in her bedroom. One morning he went to light the fire as usual and on

193the extinguished ashes he found the food that he had left for her the day before. Then he looked

194into her bedroom and saw her lying on the bed covered with the ermine cape, more beautiful than

195ever and with her skin turned into an ivory casing. Four months later, when Jose Arcadio arrived, he

196found her intact.

197It was impossible to conceive of a man more like his mother. He was wearing a somber taffeta

198suit, a shirt with a round and hard collar, and a thin silk ribbon tied in a bow in place of a necktie.

199He was ruddy and languid with a startled look and weak lips. His black hair, shiny and smooth,

200parted in the middle of his head by a straight and tired line, had the same artificial appearance as the

201hair on the saints. The shadow of a well-uprooted beard on his paraffin face looked like a question

202of conscience. His hands were pale, with green veins and fingers that were like parasites, and he

203wore a solid gold ring with a round sunflower opal on his left index finger. When he opened the

204street door Aureliano did not have to be told who he was to realize that he came from far away.

205With his steps the house filled up with the fragrance of the toilet water that Ursula used to splash on

206him when he was a child in order to find him in the shadows, in some way impossible to ascertain,

207after so many years of absence. Jose Arcadio was still an autumnal child, terribly sad and solitary. He

208went directly to his mother’s bedroom, where Aureliano had boiled mercury for four months in his

209grandfather’s grandfather’s water pipe to conserve the body according to Melquiades’ formula. Jose

210Arcadio did not ask him any questions. He kissed the corpse on the forehead and withdrew from

211under her skirt the pocket of casing which contained three as yet unused pessaries and the key to her

212cabinet. He did everything with direct and decisive movements, in contrast to his languid look. From

213the cabinet he took a small damascene chest with the family crest and found on the inside, which

214was perfumed with sandalwood, the long letter in which Fernanda unburdened her heart of the

215numerous truths that she had hidden from him. He read it standing up, avidly but without anxiety,

216and at the third page he stopped and examined Aureliano with a look of second recognition.

217“So,” he said with a voice with a touch of razor in it, “You’re the bastard.”

218“I’m Aureliano Buendia.”

219“Go to your room,” Jose Arcadio said.

220Aureliano went and did not come out again even from curiosity when he heard the sound of the

221solitary funeral ceremonies. Sometimes, from the kitchen, he would see Jose Arcadio strolling

222through the house, smothered by his anxious breathing, and he continued hearing his steps in the

223ruined bedrooms after midnight. He did not hear his voice for many months, not only because Jose

224Arcadio never addressed him, but also because he had no desire for it to happen or time to think

225about anything else but the parchments. On Fernanda’s death he had taken out the next-to-the-last

226little fish and gone to the wise Catalonian’s bookstore in search of the books he needed. Nothing he

227saw along the way interested him, perhaps because he lacked any memories for comparison and the

228deserted streets and desolate houses were the same as he had imagined them at a time when he

229would have given his soul to know them. He had given himself the permission denied by Fernanda

230and only once and for the minimum time necessary, so without pausing he went along the eleven

231blocks that separated the house from the narrow street where dreams had been interpreted in other

232days and he went panting into the confused and gloomy place where there was barely room to

233move. More than a bookstore, it looked like a dump for used books, which were placed in disorder on the shelves chewed by termites, in the comers sticky with cobwebs, and even in the spaces that

234were supposed to serve as passageways. On a long table, also heaped with old books and papers, the

235proprietor was writing tireless prose in purple letters, somewhat outlandish, and on the loose pages

236of a school notebook. He had a handsome head of silver hair which fell down over his forehead like

237the plume of a cockatoo, and his blue eyes, lively and close-set, revealed the gentleness of a man

238who had read all of the books. He was wearing short pants and soaking in perspiration, and he did

239not stop his writing to see who had come in. Aureliano had no difficulty in rescuing the five books

240that he was looking for from that fabulous disorder, because they were exactly where Melquiades

241had told him they would be. Without saying a word he handed them, along with the little gold fish,

242to the wise Catalonian and the latter examined them, his eyelids contracting like two clams. “You

243must be mad,” he said in his own language, shmgging his shoulders, and he handed back to

244Aureliano the five books and the little fish.

245“You can have them” he said in Spanish. “The last man who read these books must have been

246Isaac the Blindman, so consider well what you’re doing. ”

247Jose Arcadio restored Meme’s bedroom and had the velvet curtains cleaned and mended along

248with the damask on the canopy of the viceregal bed, and he put to use once more the abandoned

249bathroom where the cement pool was blackened by a fibrous and rough coating. He restricted his

250vest-pocket empire of worn, exotic clothing, false perfumes, and cheap jewelry to those places. The

251only thing that seemed to wort}? him in the rest of the house were the saints on the family altar,

252which he burned down to ashes one afternoon in a bonfire he lighted in the courtyard. He would

253sleep until past eleven o’clock. He would go to the bathroom in a shabby robe with golden dragons

254on it and a pair of slippers with yellow tassels, and there he would officiate at a rite which for its care

255and length recalled Remedios the Beauty. Before bathing he would perfume the pool with the salts

256that he carried in three alabaster flacons. He did not bathe himself with the gourd but would plunge

257into the fragrant waters and remain there for two hours floating on his back, lulled by the coolness

258and by the memory of Amaranta. A few days after arriving he put aside his taffeta suit, which in

259addition to being too hot for the town was the only one that he had, and he exchanged it for some

260tight-fitting pants very similar to those worn by Pietro Crespi during his dance lessons and a silk

261shirt woven with thread from living caterpillars and with Inis initials embroidered over the heart.

262Twice a week he would wash the complete change in the tub and would wear his robe until it dried

263because he had nothing else to put on. He never ate at home. He would go out when the heat of

264siesta time had eased and would not return until well into the night. Then he would continue his

265anxious pacing, breathing like a cat and thinking about Amaranta. She and the frightful look of the

266saints in the glow of the nocturnal lamp were the two memories he retained of the house. Many

267times during the hallucinating Roman August he had opened his eyes in the middle of his sleep and

268had seen Amaranta rising out of a marble-edged pool with her lace petticoats and the bandage on

269her hand, idealized by the anxiety of exile. Unlike Aureliano Jose who tried to drown that image in

270the bloody bog of war, he tried to keep it alive in the sink of concupiscence while he entertained his

271mother with the endless fable of his pontifical vocation. It never occurred either to him or to

272Fernanda to think that their correspondence was an exchange of fantasies. Jose Arcadio, who left

273the seminary as soon as he reached Rome, continued nourishing the legend of theology and canon

274law so as not to jeopardize the fabulous inheritance of which his mother’s delirious letters spoke and

275which would rescue him from the misery and sordidness he shared with two friends in a Trastevere

276garret. When he received Fernanda’s last letter, dictated by the foreboding of imminent death, he put

277the leftovers of his false splendor into a suitcase and crossed the ocean in the hold of a ship where

278immigrants were crammed together like cattle in a slaughterhouse, eating cold macaroni and wormy

279cheese. Before he read Fernanda’s will, which was nothing but a detailed and tardy recapitulation of

280her misfortunes, the broken-down furniture and the weeds on the porch had indicated that he had fallen into a trap from which he would never escape, exiled forever from the diamond light and

281timeless air of the Roman spring. During the cmshing insomnia brought on by his asthma he would

282measure and remeasure the depth of his misfortune as he went through the shadowy house where

283the senile fussing of Ursula had instilled a fear of the world in him. In order to be sure that she

284would not lose him in the shadows, she had assigned him a corner of the bedroom, the only one

285where he would be safe from the dead people who wandered through the house after sundown. “If

286you do anything bad,” Ursula would tell him, “the saints will let me know.” The terror-filled nights

287of his childhood were reduced to that corner where he would remain motionless until it was time to

288go to bed, perspiring with fear on a stool under the watchful and glacial eyes of the tattletale saints.

289It was useless torture because even at that time he already had a terror of everything around him and

290he was prepared to be frightened at anything he met in life: women on the street, who would ruin

291his blood; the women in the house, who bore children with the tail of a pig; fighting cocks, who

292brought on the death of men and remorse for the rest of one’s life; firearms, which with the mere

293touch would bring down twenty years of war; uncertain ventures, which led only to disillusionment

294and madness—everything, in short, everything that God had created in His infinite goodness and

295that the devil had perverted. When he awakened, pressed in the vise of his nightmares, the light in

296the window and the caresses of Amaranta in the bath and the pleasure of being powdered between

297the legs with a silk puff would release him from the terror. Even Ursula was different under the

298radiant light in the garden because there she did not talk about fearful things but would bmsh his

299teeth with charcoal powder so that he would have the radiant smile of a Pope, and she would cut

300and polish Inis nails so that the pilgrims who came to Rome from all over the world would be

301startled at the beauty of the Pope’s hands as he blessed them, and she would comb his hair like that

302of a Pope, and she would sprinkle his body and his clothing with toilet water so that his body and

303his clothes would have the fragrance of a Pope. In the courtyard of Castel Gandolfo he had seen the

304Pope on a balcony making the same speech in seven languages for a crowd of pilgrims and the only

305thing, indeed, that had drawn his attention was the whiteness of his hands, which seemed to have

306been soaked in lye, the dazzling shine of his summer clothing, and the hidden breath of cologne.

307Almost a year after his return home, having sold the silver candlesticks and the heraldic

308chamberpot—which at the moment of truth turned out to have only a little gold plating on the

309crest—in order to eat, the only distraction of Jose Arcadio was to pick up children in town so that

310they could play in the house. He would appear with them at siesta time and have them skip rope in

311the garden, sing on the porch, and do acrobatics on the furniture in the living room while he would

312go among the groups giving lessons in good manners. At that time he had finished with the tight

313pants and the silk shirts and was wearing an ordinary suit of clothing that he had bought in the Arab

314stores, but he still maintained his languid dignity and his papal air. The children took over the house

315just as Meme’s schoolmates had done in the past. Until well into the night they could be heard

316chattering and singing and tap-dancing, so that the house resembled a boarding school where there

317was no discipline. Aureliano did not worry about the invasion as long as they did not bother him in

318Melquiades’ room. One morning two children pushed open the door and were startled at the sight

319of a filthy and hairy man who was still deciphering the parchments on the worktable. They did not

320dare go in, but they kept on watching the room. They would peep in through the cracks, whispering,

321they threw live animals in through the transom, and on one occasion they nailed up the door and the

322window and it took Aureliano half a day to force them open. Amused at their unpunished mischief,

323four of the children went into the room one morning while Aureliano was in the kitchen, preparing

324to destroy the parchments. But as soon as they laid hands on the yellowed sheets an angelic force

325lifted them off the ground and held them suspended in the air until Aureliano returned and took the

326parchments away from them. From then on they did not bother him.

327The four oldest children, who wore short pants in spite of the fact that they were on the

328threshold of adolescence, busied themselves with Jose Arcadio’s personal appearance. They would

329arrive earlier than the others and spend the morning shaving him, giving him massages with hot

330towels, cutting and polishing the nails on his hands and feet, and perfuming him with toilet water.

331On several occasions they would get into the pool to soap him from head to toe as he floated on his

332back thinking about Amaranta. Then they would dry him, powder his body, and dress him. One of

333the children, who had curly blond hair and eyes of pink glass like a rabbit, was accustomed to

334sleeping in the house. The bonds that linked him to Jose Arcadio were so strong that he would

335accompany him in his asthmatic insomnia, without speaking, strolling through the house with him in

336the darkness. One night in the room where Ursula had slept they saw a yellow glow coming through

337the crumbling cement as if an underground sun had changed the floor of the room into a pane of

338glass. They did not have to turn on the light. It was sufficient to lift the broken slabs in the corner

339where Ursula’s bed had always stood and where the glow was most intense to find the secret crypt

340that Aureliano Segundo had worn himself out searching for during the delirium of Inis excavations.

341There were the three canvas sacks closed with copper wire, and inside of them the seven thousand

342two hundred fourteen pieces of eight, which continued glowing like embers in the darkness.

343The discovery of the treasure was like a deflagration. Instead of returning to Rome with the

344sudden fortune, which had been Inis dream maturing in misery, Jose Arcadio converted the house

345into a decadent paradise. He replaced the curtains and the canopy of the bed with new velvet, and he

346had the bathroom floor covered with paving stones and the walls with tiles. The cupboard in the

347dining room was filled with fruit preserves, hams, and pickles, and the unused pantry was opened

348again for the storage of wines and liqueurs which Jose Arcadio himself brought from the railroad

349station in crates marked with his name. One night he and the four oldest children had a party' that

350lasted until dawn. At six in the morning they came out naked from the bedroom, drained the pool,

351and filled it with champagne. They jumped in en masse, swimming like birds flying through a sky

352gilded with fragrant bubbles, while Jose Arcadio, floated on his back on the edge of the festivities,

353remembering Amaranta with his eyes open. He remained that way, wrapped up in himself, thinking

354about the bitterness of his equivocal pleasures until after the children had become tired and gone in

355a troop to the bedroom, where they tore down the curtains to dry' themselves, and in the disorder

356they broke the rock crystal mirror into four pieces and destroyed the canopy of the bed in the tumult

357of lying down. When Jose Arcadio came back from the bathroom, he found them sleeping in a

358naked heap in the shipwrecked bedroom. Inflamed, not so much because of the damage as because

359of the disgust and pity that he felt for himself in the emptiness of the saturnalia, he armed himself

360with an ecclesiastical cat-o-nine-tails that he kept in the bottom of his tmnk along with a hair-shirt

361and other instmments of mortification and penance, and drove the children out of the house,

362howling like a madman and whipping them without mercy as a person would not even have done to

363a pack of coyotes. He was done in, with an attack of asthma that lasted for several days and that

364gave him the look of a man on his deathbed. On the third night of torture, overcome by

365asphyxiation, he went to Aureliano’s room to ask him the favor of buying some powders to inhale at