One Hundred Years of Solitde … Garcia Marquez
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ was born in Aracataca, Colombia in 1928, but he lived most of his life in Mexico and Europe. He attended the University of Bogota and later worked as staff reporter and film critic for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador. In addition to ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, he has also written two collections of short fiction, NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL and LEAF STORM.
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE
Jort Areadio BoendUi
m. Cnula Iguarln
olonel Aurellano Btiendia-
m. Remcdios Moscote
-Jos6 Areadio
m-Rebeca
Aurcliano Jose
(by Pilar Ternera)
17 Aurelianos
R’emedios the Beauty
Areadio
(by Pilar Ternera)
m. Santa Sofia de la Piedad
Aurellano Segundo
m. Fernanda del Carplo
Amaranta
Jose Areadio Segundo
j_Renata
Remedios (Mane)
Aurellano
(by MauHcioBabfionla)
lose Areadio
-..Amaranta
m. Gasti
ranta Orsula
Gaston
Aurellano
(by Aurellano^
Chapter 4
24
Pietro Crespi came back to repair the pianola. Rebeca and Amaranta helped him put the strings
in order and helped him with their laughter at the mix-up of the melodies. It was extremely pleasant
and so chaste in its way that Ursula ceased her vigilance. On the eve of his departure a farewell
dance for him was improvised with the pianola and with Rebeca he put on a skillful demonstration
of modern dance, Arcadio and Amaranta matched them in grace and skill. But the exhibition was
intermpted because Pilar Ternera, who was at the door with the onlookers, had a fight, biting and
hair pulling, with a woman who had dared to comment that Arcadio had a woman’s behind. Toward
midnight Pietro Crespi took his leave with a sentimental little speech, and he promised to return
very soon. Rebeca accompanied him to the door, and having closed up the house and put out the
lamps, she went to her room to weep. It was an inconsolable weeping that lasted for several days,
the cause of which was not known even by Amaranta. Her hermetism was not odd. Although she
seemed expansive and cordial, she had a solitary character and an impenetrable heart. She was a
splendid adolescent with long and firm bones, but she still insisted on using the small wooden
rocking chair with which she had arrived at the house, reinforced many times and with the arms
gone. No one had discovered that even at that age she still had the habit of sucking her finger. That
was why she would not lose an opportunity to lock herself in the bathroom and had acquired the
habit of sleeping with her face to the wall. On rainy afternoons, embroidering with a group of
friends on the begonia porch, she would lose the thread of the conversation and a tear of nostalgia
would salt her palate when she saw the strips of damp earth and the piles of mud that the
earthworms had pushed up in the garden. Those secret tastes, defeated in the past by oranges and
rhubarb, broke out into an irrepressible urge when she began to weep. She went back to eating
earth. The first time she did it almost out of curiosity, sure that the bad taste would be the best cure
for the temptation. And, in fact, she could not bear the earth in her mouth. But she persevered,
overcome by the growing anxiety, and little by little she was getting back her ancestral appetite, the
taste of primary minerals, the unbridled satisfaction of what was the original food. She would put
handfuls of earth in her pockets, and ate them in small bits without being seen, with a confused
feeling of pleasure and rage, as she instmcted her girl friends in the most difficult needlepoint and
spoke about other men, who did not deserve the sacrifice of having one eat the whitewash on the
walls because of them. The handfuls of earth made the only man who deserved that show of
degradation less remote and more certain, as if the ground that he walked on with his fine patent
leather boots in another part of the world were transmitting to her the weight and the temperature
of his blood in a mineral savor that left a harsh aftertaste in her mouth and a sediment of peace in
her heart. One afternoon, for no reason, Amparo Moscote asked permission to see the house.
Amaranta and Rebeca, disconcerted by the unexpected visit, attended her with a stiff formality. They
showed her the remodeled mansion, they had her listen to the rolls on the pianola, and they offered
her orange marmalade and crackers. Amparo gave a lesson in dignity, personal charm, and good
manners that impressed Ursula in the few moments that she was present during the visit. After two
hours, when the conversation was beginning to wane, Amparo took advantage of Amaranta’s
distraction and gave Rebeca a letter. She was able to see the name of the Estimable Senorita Rebeca
Buendia, written in the same methodical hand, with the same green ink, and the same delicacy of
words with which the instructions for the operation of the pianola were written, and she folded the
letter with the tips of her fingers and hid it in her bosom, looking at Amparo Moscote with an
expression of endless and unconditional gratitude and a silent promise of complicity unto death.
The sudden friendship between Amparo Moscote and Rebeca Buendia awakened the hopes of
Aureliano. The memory of little Remedios had not stopped tormenting him, but he had not found a
chance to see her. When he would stroll through town with his closest friends, Magnifico Visbal and
Gerineldo Marquez—the sons of the founders of the same names—he would look for her in the
sewing shop with an anxious glance, but he saw only the older sisters. The presence of Amparo
Moscote in the house was like a premonition. “She has to come with her,” Aureliano would say to
himself in a low voice. “She has to come.” He repeated it so many times and with such conviction
that one afternoon when he was putting together a little gold fish in the work shop, he had the
certainty that she had answered his call. Indeed, a short time later he heard the childish voice, and
when he looked up his heart froze with terror as he saw the girl at the door, dressed in pink organdy
and wearing white boots.
“You can’t go in there, Remedios, Amparo Moscote said from the hall. They’re working.”
But Aureliano did not give her time to respond. He picked up the little fish by the chain that
came through its mouth and said to her.
“Come in.”
Remedios went over and asked some questions about the fish that Aureliano could not answer
because he was seized with a sudden attack of asthma. He wanted to stay beside that lily skin
forever, beside those emerald eyes, close to that voice that called him “sir” with every question,
showing the same respect that she gave her father. Melquiades was in the corner seated at the desk
scribbling indecipherable signs. Aureliano hated him. All he could do was tell Remedios that he was
going to give her the little fish and the girl was so startled by the offer that she left the workshop as
fast as she could. That afternoon Aureliano lost the hidden patience with which he had waited for a
chance to see her. He neglected his work. In several desperate efforts of concentration he willed her
to appear but Remedios did not respond. He looked for her in her sisters’ shop, behind the window
shades in her house, in her father’s office, but he found her only in the image that saturated his
private and terrible solitude. He would spend whole hours with Rebeca in the parlor listening to the
music on the pianola. She was listening to it because it was the music with which Pietro Crespi had
taught them how to dance. Aureliano listened to it simply because everything, even music, reminded
him of Remedios.