come across him by chance as he protested In broken Spanish because there were no rooms at the Hotel Jacob,
and as he frequently did with strangers, he took him home. He was in the captive-balloon business, which had
taken him halfway around the world with excellent profits, but he had not succeeded in taking anyone up in
Macondo because they considered that invention backward after having seen and tried the gypsies?flying carpets.
He was leaving, therefore, on the next train. When they brought to the table the tiger-striped bunch of bananas
that they were accustomed to hang in the dining room during lunch, he picked the first piece of fruit without
great enthusiasm. But he kept on eating as he spoke, tasting, chewing, more with the distraction of a wise man
than with the delight of a good eater, and when he finished the first bunch he asked them to bring him another.
Then he took a small case with optical instruments out of the toolbox that he always carried with him. With the
auspicious attention of a diamond merchant he examined the banana meticulously, dissecting it with a special
scalpel, weighing the pieces on a pharmacist’s scale, and calculating its breadth with a gunsmith’s calipers. Then
he took a series of instruments out of the chest with which he measured the temperature, the level of humidity in
the atmosphere, and the intensity of the light. It was such an intriguing ceremony that no one could eat in peace
as everybody waited for Mr. Herbert to pass a final and revealing judgment, but he did not say anything that
allowed anyone to guess his intentions.
? 103 312 188 3
On the days that followed he was seen with a net and a small basket hunting butterflies on the outskirts of
town. On Wednesday a group of engineers, agronomists, hydrologists, topographers, and surveyors arrived who
for several weeks explored the places where Mr. Herbert had hunted his butterflies. Later on Mr. Jack Brown
arrived in an extra coach that had been coupled onto the yellow train and that was silver-plated all over,buy runescape money, with
seats of episcopal velvet, and a roof of blue glass. Also arriving on the special car,buy shaiya gold, fluttering around Mr. Brown,
were the solemn lawyers dressed in black who in different times had followed Colonel Aureliano Buendaa
everywhere, and that led the people to think that the agronomists,silkroad power leveling, hydrologists, topographers, and surveyors, like
Mr. Herbert with his captive balloons and his colored butterflies and Mr. Brown with his mausoleum on wheels
and his ferocious German shepherd dogs, had something to do with the war. There was not much time to think
about it, however,buy rose zulie, because the suspicious inhabitants of Macondo barely began to wonder what the devil was
going on when the town had already become transformed into an encampment of wooden houses with zinc roofs
inhabited by foreigners who arrived on the train from halfway around the world, riding not only on the seats and
platforms but even on the roof of the coaches. The gringos, who later on brought their languid wives in muslin
dresses and large veiled hats, built a separate town across the railroad tracks with streets lined with palm trees,
houses with screened windows, small white tables on the terraces, and fans mounted on the ceilings, and
extensive blue lawns with peacocks and quails. The section was surrounded by a metal fence topped with a band
of electrified chicken wire which during the cool summer mornings would be black with roasted swallows. No
one knew yet what they were after, or whether they were actually nothing but philanthropists, and they had
already caused a colossal disturbance, much more than that of the old gypsies, but less transitory and
canals, clearing away rapids, and even harnessing waterfalls. “I know all of this by heart,?2rsula would shout.
“It’s as if time had turned around and we were back at the beginning.?When he thought that the river was
navigable,mu bless, Jos?Arcadio Segundo gave his brother a detailed account of his plans and the latter gave him the
money he needed for the enterprise. He disappeared for a long time. It had been said that his plan to buy a boat
was nothing but a trick to make off with his brother’s money when the news spread that a strange craft was
approaching the town. The inhabitants of Macondo, who no longer remembered the colossal undertakings of Jos?
Arcadio Buendaa, ran to the riverbank and saw with eyes popping in disbelief the arrival of the first and last boat
ever to dock in the town. It was nothing but a log raft drawn by thick ropes pulled by twenty men who walked
along the bank. In the prow, with a glow of satisfaction in his eyes, Jos?Arcadio Segundo was directing the
arduous maneuver. There arrived with him a rich group of splendid matrons who were protecting themselves
from the burning sun with gaudy parasols, and wore on their shoulders fine silk kerchiefs, with colored creams
on their faces and natural flowers in their hair and golden serpents on their arms and diamonds in their teeth. The
log raft was the only vessel that Jos?Arcadio Segundo was able to bring to Macondo, and only once, but he never
recognized the failure of his enterprise, but proclaimed his deed as a victory of will power. He gave a scrupulous
accounting to his brother and very soon plunged back into the routine of cockfights. The only thing that remained
of that unfortunate venture was the breath of renovation that the matrons from France brought,buy metin2 yang, as their
magnificent arts transformed traditional methods of love and their sense of social well-being abolished
Catarino’s antiquated place and turned the street into a bazaar of Japanese lanterns and nostalgic hand organs.
They were the promoters of the bloody carnival that plunged Macondo into delirium for three days and whose
only lasting consequence was having given Aureliano Segundo the opportunity to meet Fernanda del Carpio.
Remedios the Beauty was proclaimed queen. 2rsula, who shuddered at the disquieted beauty of her great-
granddaughter, could not prevent the choice. Until then she had succeeded in keeping her off the streets unless it
was to go to mass with Amaranta, but she made her cover her face with a black shawl. The most impious men,
those who would disguise themselves as priests to say sacrilegious masses in Catarino’s store, would go to
church with an aim to see, if only for an instant, the face of Remedios the Beauty, whose legendary good looks
were spoken of with alarming excitement throughout the swamp. It was a long time before they were able to do
so, and it would have been better for them if they never had, because most of them never recovered their peaceful
habits of sleep. The man who made it possible, a foreigner, lost his serenity forever, became involved in the
sloughs of abjection and misery, and years later was cut to pieces by a train after he had fallen asleep on the
tracks. From the moment he was seen in the church, wearing a green velvet suit and an embroidered vest,buy runescape money, no one
doubted that he came from far away, perhaps from some distant city outside of the country, attracted by the
magical fascination of Remedios the Beauty. He was so handsome, so elegant and dignified, with such presence,
that Pietro Crespi would have been a mere fop beside him and many women whispered with spiteful smiles that
he was the one who really should have worn the shawl. He did not speak to anyone in Macondo. He appeared at
dawn on Sunday like a prince in a fairy tale, riding a horse with silver stirrups and a velvet blanket,cheap rs money, and he left
town after mass.
The power of his presence was such that from the first time he was seen in the church everybody took it for
granted that a silent and tense duel had been established between him and Remedios the Beauty, a secret pact, an
irrevocable challenge that would end not only in love but also in death. On the sixth Sunday the gentleman
appeared with a yellow rose in his hand. He heard mass standing, as he always did, and at the end he stepped in
2rsula was bringing him his breakfast when she saw a man coming along the hall. He was short and stocky, with
a black suit on and a hat that was also black, enormous,archlord power leveling, pulled down to his taciturn eyes. “Good Lord,?2rsula
thought, “I could have sworn it was Melquaades.?It was Cataure, Visitaci?n’s brother, who had left the house
fleeing from the insomnia plague and of whom there had never been any news. Visitaci?n asked him why he had
come back, and he answered her in their solemn language:
“I have come for the exequies of the king.?
Then they went into Jos?Arcadio Buendaa’s room, shook him as hard as they could, shouted in his ear, put a
mirror in front of his nostrils, but they could not awaken him. A short time later, when the carpenter was taking
measurements for the coffin, through the window they saw a light rain of tiny yellow flowers falling. They fell
on the town all through the night in a silent storm, and they covered the roofs and blocked the doors and
smothered the animals who dept outdoors. So many flowers fell from the sky that in the morning the streets were
carpeted with a compact cushion and they had to clear them away with shovels and rakes so that the funeral
procession could pass by.
Chapter 8
SITTNG IN THE WICKER ROCKING chair with her interrupted work in her lap, Amaranta watched Aureliano,
Jos?, his chin covered with foam, stropping his razor to give himself his first shave. His blackheads bled and he
cut his upper lip as he tried to shape a mustache of blond fuzz and when it was all over he looked the same as
before, but the laborious process gave Amaranta the feeling that she had begun to grow old at that moment.
“You look just like Aureliano when he was your age,?she said. “You’re a man now.?
He had been for a long time, ever since that distant day when Amaranta thought he was still a child and
continued getting undressed in front of him in the bathroom as she had always done, as she had been used to
doing ever since Pilar Ternera had turned him over to her to finish his upbringing. The first time that he saw her
the only thing that drew his attention was the deep depression between her breasts. He was so innocent that he
asked her what had happened to her and Amaranta pretended to dig into her breasts with the tips of her fingers
and answered: “They gave me some terrible cuts.?Some time later, when she had recovered from Pietro Crespi’s
suicide and would bathe with Aureliano Jos?again, he no longer paid attention to the depression but felt a strange
trembling at the sight of the splendid breasts with their brown nipples. He kept on examining her, discovering the
miracle of her intimacy inch by inch,buy runescape money, and he felt his skin tingle as he contemplated the way her skin tingled when
it touched the water. Ever since he was a small child he had the custom of leaving his hammock and waking up
in Amaranta’s bed, because contact with her was a way of overcoming his fear of the dark. But since that day
when he became aware of his own nakedness, it was not fear of the dark that drove him to crawl in under her
mosquito netting but an urge to feel Amaranta’s warm breathing at dawn. Early one morning during the time
when she refused Colonel Gerineldo Mrquez, Aureliano Jos?awoke with the feeling that he could not breathe.
He felt Amaranta’s fingers searching across his stomach like warm and anxious little caterpillars. Pretending to
sleep,rs money, he changed his position to make it easier, and then he felt the hand without the black bandage diving like a
blind shellfish into the algae of his anxiety. Although they seemed to ignore what both of them knew and what
each one knew that the other knew,cabal power leveling, from that night on they were yoked together in an inviolable complicity.
Aureliano Jos?could not get to sleep until he heard the twelve-o’clock waltz on the parlor dock, and the mature
COLONEL AURELIANO BUENDaA organized thirty-two armed uprisings and he lost them all. He had
seventeen male children by seventeen different women and they were exterminated one after the other on a
single night before the oldest one had reached the age of thirty-five. He survived fourteen attempts on his life,
seventy-three ambushes,buy runescape money, and a firing squad. He lived through a dose of strychnine in his coffee that was enough
to kill a horse. He refused the Order of Merit, which the President of the Republic awarded him. He rose to be
Commander in Chief of the revolutionary forces, with jurisdiction and command from one border to the other,
and the man most feared by the government, but he never let himself be photographed. He declined the lifetime
pension offered him after the war and until old age he made his living from the little gold fishes that he
manufactured in his workshop in Macondo. Although he always fought at the head of his men, the only wound
that he received was the one he gave himself after signing the Treaty of Neerlandia, which put an end to almost
twenty years of civil war. He shot himself in the chest with a pistol and the bullet came out through his back
without damaging any vital organ. The only thing left of all that was a street that bore his name in Macondo. And
yet, as he declared a few years before he died of old age,buy tales of pirates money, he had not expected any of that on the dawn he left with
his twenty-one men to join the forces of General Victorio Medina.
“We leave Macondo in your care.?was all that he said to Arcadio before leaving. “We leave it to you in good
shape, try to have it in better shape when we return.?
Arcadio gave a very personal interpretation to the instructions. He invented a uniform with the braid and
epaulets of a marshal, inspired by the prints in one of Melquaades?books, and around his waist he buckled the
saber with gold tassels that had belonged to the executed captain. He set up the two artillery pieces at the
entrance to town, put uniforms on his former pupils, who had been amused by his fiery proclamations, and let
them wander through the streets armed in order to give outsiders an impression of invulnerability. It was a
double-edged deception, for the government did not dare attack the place for ten months, but when it did it
unleashed such a large force against it that resistance was liquidated in a half hour. From the first day of his rule
Arcadio revealed his predilection for decrees. He would read as many as four a day in order to decree and
institute everything that came into his head. He imposed obligatory military service for men over eighteen,
declared to be public property any animals walking the streets after six in the evening, and made men who were
overage wear red armbands. He sequestered Father Nicanor in the parish house under pain of execution and
prohibited him from saying mass or ringing the bells unless it was for a Liberal victory. In order that no one
would doubt the severity of his aims, he ordered a firing squad organized in the square and had it shoot at a
scarecrow. At first no one took him seriously. They were, after all, schoolchildren playing at being grown-ups.
But one night,runescape power leveling, when Arcadio went into Catarino’s store,cheap runescape gold, the trumpeter in the group greeted him with a fanfare
that made the customers laugh and Arcadio had him shot for disrespect for the authorities. People who protested
were put on bread and water with their ankles in a set of stocks that he had set up in a schoolroom. “You
murderer!?2rsula would shout at him every time she learned of some new arbitrary act. “When Aureliano finds
out he’s going to shoot you and I’ll be the first one to be glad.?But it was of no use. Arcadio continued tightening
the tourniquet with unnecessary rigor until he became the cruelest ruler that Macondo had ever known. “Now let
them suffer the difference,?Don Apolinar Moscote said on one occasion. “This is the Liberal paradise.?Arcadio
found out about it. At the head of a patrol he assaulted the house, destroyed the furniture, flogged the daughters,
and dragged out Don Apolinar Moscote. When 2rsula burst into the courtyard of headquarters, after having gone
through the town shouting shame and brandishing with rage a pitch-covered whip, Arcadio himself was
because of his bestial belching. Arcadio, who never knew the secret of their relationship, scarcely answered the
questions that he asked with the obvious idea of gaining his affection. Aureliano tried to relive the times when
they slept in the same room, tried to revive the complicity of childhood, but Jos?Arcadio had forgotten about it,
?42 312188 3
because life at sea had saturated his memory with too many things to remember. Only Rebeca succumbed to the
first impact. The day that she saw him pass by her bedroom she thought that Pietro Crespi was a sugary dandy
next to that protomale whose volcanic breathing could be heard all over the house. She tried to get near him
under any pretext. On a certain occasion Jos?Arcadio looked at her body with shameless attention and said to her
“You’re a woman, little sister.?Rebeca lost control of herself. She went back to eating earth and the whitewash on
the walls with the avidity of previous days, and she sucked her finger with so much anxiety that she developed a
callus on her thumb. She vomited up a green liquid with dead leeches in it. She spent nights awake shaking with
fever, fighting against delirium, waiting until the house shook with the return of Jos?Arcadio at dawn. One
afternoon, when everyone was having a siesta, she could no longer resist and went to his bedroom. She found
him in his shorts, lying in the hammock that he had hung from the beams with a ship’s hawser. She was so
impressed by his enormous motley nakedness that she felt an impulse to retreat. “Excuse me,?she said, “I didn’t
know you were here.?But she lowered her voice so as not to wake anyone up. “Come here,cheap lord of the rings online gold,?he said. Rebeca
obeyed. She stopped beside the hammock in an icy sweat, feeling knots forming in her intestines, while Jos?
Arcadio stroked her ankles with the tips of his fingers,lord of the rings gold, then her calves, then her thighs, murmuring: “Oh, little
sister, little sister.?She had to make a supernatural effort not to die when a startlingl y regulated cyclonic power
lifted her up by the waist and despoiled her of her intimacy with three clashes of its claws and quartered her like
a little bird. She managed to thank God for having been born before she lost herself in the inconceivable pleasure
of that unbearable pain, splashing in the steaming marsh of the hammock which absorbed the explosion of blood
like a blotter.
Three days later they were married during the five-o’clock mass. Jos?Arcadio had gone to Pietro Crespi’s store
the day before. He found him giving a zither lesson and did not draw him aside to speak to him. “I’m going to
marry Rebeca,?he told him. Pietro Crespi turned pale, gave the zither to one of his pupils,buy warcraft gold, and dismissed the
class. When they were alone in the room that was crowded with musical instruments and mechanical toys, Pietro
Crespi said:
“She’s your sister.?
“I don’t care,?Jos?Arcadio replied.
Pietro Crespi mopped his brow with the handkerchief that was soaked in lavender.
“It’s against nature,?he explained, “and besides,buy runescape money, it’s against the law.?
Jos?Arcadio grew impatient, not so much at the argument as over Pietro Crespi’s paleness.
“Fuck nature two times over,?he said. “And I’ve come to tell you not to bother going to ask Rebeca anything.?
But his brutal deportment broke down when he saw Pietro Crespi’s eyes grow moist.
“Now,?he said to him in a different tone, “if you really like the family, there’s Amaranta for you.?
the tormenting hammering and the constant noise of wooden lathings ceased in a silence that was startled at the
order and neatness of the music. They all ran to the parlor. Jos?Arcadio Buendaa was as if struck by lightning, not
because of the beauty of the melody, but because of the automatic working of the keys of the pianola, and he set
up Melquaades?camera with the hope of getting a daguerreotype of the invisible player. That day the Italian had
lunch with them. Rebeca and Amaranta, serving the table, were intimidated by the way in which the angelic man
with pale and ringless hands manipulated the utensils. In the living room, next to the parlor, Pietro Crespi taught
them how to dance. He showed them the steps without touching them, keeping time with a metronome,buy runescape money, under the
friendly eye of 2rsula, who did not leave the room for a moment while her daughters had their lesson. Pietro
Crespi wore special pants on those days, very elastic and tight, and dancing slippers, “You don’t have to worry so
much,?Jos?Arcadio Buendaa told her. “The man’s a fairy.?But she did not leave off her vigilance until the
apprenticeship was over and the Italian left Macondo. Then they began to organize the party. 2rsula drew up a
strict guest list, in which the only ones invited were the descendants of the founders, except for the family of
Pilar Ternera, who by then had had two more children by unknown fathers. It was truly a high-class list, except
that it was determined by feelings of friendship, for those favored were not only the oldest friends of Jos?Arcadio
Buendaa’s house since before they undertook the exodus and the founding of Macondo, but also their sons and
grandsons, who were the constant companions of Aureliano and Arcadio since infancy, and their daughters, who
were the only ones who visited the house to embroider with Rebeca and Amaranta. Don Apolinar Moscote, the
benevolent ruler whose activity had been reduced to the maintenance from his scanty resources of two policemen
armed with wooden clubs, was a figurehead. In older to support the household expenses his daughters had
opened a sewing shop, where they made felt flowers as well as guava delicacies, and wrote love notes to order.
?28 312188 3
But in spite of being modest and hard-working, the most beautiful girls in Iowa, and the most skilled at the new
dances,guild wars power leveling, they did not manage to be considered for the party.
While 2rsula and the girls unpacked furniture, polished silverware, and hung pictures of maidens in boats full
of roses, which gave a breath of new life to the naked areas that the masons had built, Jos?Arcadio Buendaa
stopped his pursuit of the image of God,eve isk, convinced of His nonexistence, and he took the pianola apart in order to
decipher its magical secret. Two days before the party, swamped in a shower of leftover keys and hammers,
bungling in the midst of a mix-up of strings that would unroll in one direction and roll up again in the other, he
succeeded in a fashion in putting the instrument back together. There had never been as many surprises and as
much dashing about as in those days, but the new pitch lamps were lighted on the designated day and hour. The
house was opened, still smelling of resin and damp whitewash,aoc power leveling, and the children and grandchildren of the
founders saw the porch with ferns and begonias, the quiet rooms, the garden saturated with the fragrance of the
roses, and they gathered together in the parlor, facing the unknown invention that had been covered with a white
sheet. Those who were familiar with the piano, popular in other towns in the swamp, felt a little disheartened, but
more bitter was 2rsula’s disappointment when she put in the first roll so that Amaranta and Rebeca could begin
pink fish of insomnia, and the tender yellow ponies of insomnia,fiesta power leveling, so that dawn on Monday found the whole town
awake. No one was alarmed at first. On the contrary,swg power leveling, they were happy at not sleeping because there was so much
to do in Macondo in those days that there was barely enough time. They worked so hard that soon they had
nothing else to do and they could be found at three o’clock in the morning with their arms crossed, counting the
notes in the waltz of the clock. Those who wanted to sleep, not from fatigue but because of the nostalgia for
dreams, tried all kinds of methods of exhausting themselves. They would gather together to converse endlessly,
to tell over and over for hours on end the same jokes, to complicate to the limits of exasperation the story about
?21 312188 3
the capon, which was an endless game in which the narrator asked if they wanted him to tell them the story about
the capon, and when they answered yes, the narrator would say that he had not asked them to say yes,buy runescape money, but
whether they wanted him to tell them the story about the capon,buy fiesta online gold, and when they answered no, the narrator told
them that he had not asked them to say no, but whether they wanted him to tell them the story about the capon,
and when they remained silent the narrator told them that he had not asked them to remain silent but whether
they wanted him to tell them the story about the capon, and no one could leave because the narrator would say
that he had not asked them to leave but whether they wanted him to tell them the story about the capon, and so
on and on in a vicious circle that lasted entire nights.
When Jos?Arcadio Buendaa realized that the plague had invaded the town, he gathered together the heads of
families to explain to them what he knew about the sickness of insomnia, and they agreed on methods to prevent
the scourge from spreading to other towns in the swamp. That was why they took the bells off the goats, bells
that the Arabs had swapped them for macaws, and put them at the entrance to town at the disposal of those who
would not listen to the advice and entreaties of the sentinels and insisted on visiting the town. All strangers who
passed through the streets of Macondo at that time had to ring their bells so that the sick people would know that
they were healthy. They were not allowed to eat or drink anything during their stay, for there was no doubt but
that the illness was transmitted by mouth, and all food and drink had been contaminated by insomnia. In that way
they kept the plague restricted to the perimeter of the town. So effective was the quarantine that the day came
when the emergency situation was accepted as a natural thing and life was organized in such a way that work
picked up its rhythm again and no one worried any more about the useless habit of sleeping.
It was Aureliano who conceived the formula that was to protect them against loss of memory for several
months. He discovered it by chance. An expert insomniac, having been one of the first, he had learned the art of
silverwork to perfection. One day he was looking for the small anvil that he used for laminating metals and he
could not remember its name. His father told him: “Stake.?Aureliano wrote the name on a piece of paper that he
pasted to the base of the small anvil: stake. In that way he was sure of not forgetting it in the future. It did not
occur to him that this was the first manifestation of a loss of memory, because the object had a difficult name to
remember. But a few days later be, discovered that he had trouble remembering almost every object in the
laboratory. Then he marked them with their respective names so that all he had to do was read the inscription in