Chapter 9 chapter eight
Amaranta sat in the rattan rocking chair with her work on her knees and stared at Aureliano José, whose chin was lathered with soap and who was sharpening a razor on a thong for the first time in his life. One shave.The pimples on his face were shaved bloody, and he tried to shave the fine yellow hair on his upper lip into a mustache, but no matter how he trimmed it, the hair on his lip remained the same, but this laborious shaving action It made Amaranta feel that she was beginning to grow old at this moment.
"When Aureliano was your age, he was exactly the same as you are now," she said. "You are grown up."
In fact, he has already become an adult.It was a day long ago when Amaranta treated him like a child, undressed and took a bath in front of him, as she had always done since Pilar Ternera gave him to her. She has been used to doing this since she was brought up.
Aureliano José was so innocent that the first time he saw the depression between her breasts he asked her what was wrong and Amaranta pretended to pick her breasts with her fingers and said: "It's a big, big, Another big piece of ground has been dug up.” Later, when she recovered from Pietro Crespi’s suicide and took Aureliano José to the bath, he noticed that No more dimples in the breast.Looking at the bulging breasts and purple nipples, he couldn't help but feel an inexplicable tremor in his heart.He looked down little by little, and slowly discovered the secrets of her body, so he felt the hairs on his skin stand up, like when her skin touched water.
From a very young age he had the habit of climbing out of his hammock at night and going to sleep in Amaranta's bed, just being next to her would take away his fear of the dark.But since he became interested in Amaranta's naked body that day, it was no longer the fear of the dark, but the desire to feel her warm breath at dawn that drove him to sneak into his aunt's tent.One morning, during the period when she was rejecting Colonel Gerineldo Márquez's courtship, Aureliano José woke up with a feeling that Amaranta's fingers were like several The warm worm was eagerly stroking his belly, and he pretended to be asleep and turned over to change his position so that she would have no trouble touching it.Then he felt the unbandaged hand swimming like a scurrying mollusk among the algae it craved.Although the two men pretended not to know what they knew about each other, they were bound together by an airtight complicity from that night onwards.Aureliano José could not fall asleep without hearing the clock in the hall striking twelve, and the old girl could not rest for a moment until he had crept into her tent.
Wrinkles of sadness had begun to appear on her skin, but she never thought that the night wanderer she raised would become a good medicine for her to relieve her loneliness.The two of them not only slept together, but also chased each other in every corner of the house. No matter what time they were locked in the room, they were so excited that they never stopped.One afternoon, Úrsula almost noticed what they were doing and they were about to kiss when she entered the barn. "You love your aunt very much?" Úrsula asked Aureliano José without malice.He replied yes. "You did the right thing," Úrsula said finally when she got back to the kitchen and took some flour for bread.This episode jolted Amaranta out of her madness.She realized that she had gone too far, that she was no longer amused by kissing a child, but was playing in the twilight, dangerous and hopeless lust, and she cut off this wrong idea at once.At that time, Aureliano José was coming to the end of his military training, and he accepted this fact and went to sleep in the barracks.On Saturdays, he would go with the soldiers to Catarino's tavern, to relieve his sudden loneliness and vent his precocious love among women in the dark whom he imagined smelling like withered flowers, and with his eagerness In his imagination, he transformed them into Amaranta.
It was not long before conflicting news of the war began to come in, and just as the government acknowledged the development of the rebellion, officials in Macondo received secret intelligence that peace talks were imminent.In April a special envoy came to Colonel Gerineldo Márquez, who confirmed to the colonel that the party leaders had indeed contacted the leaders of the insurrection in the interior and that they were about to sign an armistice so that In exchange for the Liberals three ministerial posts, minority status in parliament and an amnesty for rebels who lay down their arms.The envoy also brought with him a top-secret decree from Colonel Aureliano Buendía, who disapproved of the terms of the armistice.He ordered Colonel Gerineldo Márquez to select five of his best men and prepare to leave the country with them.The order was carried out in great secrecy.A week before the proclamation of the armistice, when conflicting reports were circulating, Colonel Aureliano Buendía and ten of his henchmen, including Colonel Roque Carnicello, secretly Come to Macondo.They disbanded the troops stationed in Macondo, buried weapons, and destroyed documents.They left the town with Colonel Gerineldo Márquez and five of his men before dawn.The operation was so swift and secret that Úrsula did not know anything about it until the last moment: someone knocked lightly on the window of her room and said in a low voice: "If you want to see Aure Colonel Liango Buendía, please go to the door immediately." Ursula got up from the bed and ran out of the house in her pajamas, just in time to see a group of people walking quietly in the dust. Far from town in the fog.She did not know until the next day that Aureliano José had left with his father.
Ten days later, when the government authorities and the opposition declared the end of the war in a joint communiqué, news came that Colonel Aureliano Buendía had launched the first armed uprising on the western frontier.His few and poorly equipped troops were beaten to pieces in less than a week.But that same year, when the Liberals and Conservatives were trying to convince the nation of a reconciliation, he planned seven more uprisings.One night from a brig he bombarded Riohacha, where the defenders dragged fourteen of the city's most famous Liberals out of bed and shot them one by one in retaliation.For half a month he occupied a checkpoint on the frontier, and from there he issued a call to the whole country for all-out war.Once, in an absurd plan to cross 1,500 kilometers of uncultivated virgin land to declare war on the outskirts of the capital, his expedition got lost in the primeval jungle for three months.Another time he was less than twenty kilometers away from Macondo, but he was forced by a government patrol to retreat into the mountains, not far from the enchanted area where his father discovered the fossils of the ancient Spanish galleon long ago.
During this period, Vesita Sean died.After she abdicated the throne due to fear of insomnia, she was happy to die like this.Her last wish was to retrieve from under her bed all her wage savings buried there for more than twenty years and send them to Colonel Aureliano Buendía so that he could continue to fight, but Úrsula did not. To get the money from under her bed, because in those days it was rumored that Colonel Aureliano Buendía had been killed during a landing near the provincial capital.The official announcement - the fourth in less than two years - was deemed genuine for six months, as nothing has been heard from him since.Úrsula and Amaranta had held funerals for him several times before, but when they held his funeral this time, they received the extraordinary news that Colonel Aureliano Buendía was still alive. But he gave up his outward hostility to the government and joined the victorious Federation faction in several other Caribbean republics.He appeared under a different name, farther and farther away from his native land.It was later learned that what inspired his idea at the time was the unification of the federal army across Central America to sweep away conservative regimes from Alaska to Patagonia.He had been away for several years, and the first news Úrsula had received directly from him was a crumpled, illegible letter sent from Santiago de Cuba, passed through countless people. .
"We will never see him again in this life." Ursula exclaimed after reading the letter. "If he goes down this road, he will really go to the end of the world for Christmas."
The first person to see the letter from Úrsula and learn what had happened was the conservative general José Raquel Moncada, mayor of Macondo after the armistice. "This Aureliano," commented General Moncada, "is a pity he is not a Conservative." He really admired the colonel.Like many Conservative civil servants, he went to war to defend his party, and on the battlefield he earned the title of general despite his lack of military talent.However, like many of his party comrades, he was an anti-militarist.He regards people with guns as slobs without conviction, conspirators, careerists who are good at creating antagonism among ordinary people in order to profit from chaos.He is smart, witty, amiable, rosy-cheeked and avid cockfighting fan.For a time he was Colonel Aureliano Buendía's greatest rival.He established prestige among professional soldiers along a wide area along the coast.On one occasion, when he was compelled by strategic interests to abandon a fort to the troops of Colonel Aureliano Buendía, he left two letters to the latter.One was a long letter in which he invited the colonel to join a joint effort to humanize the war.Another letter was addressed to his wife, who lived in a Liberal-controlled area, and he left a letter begging the colonel to send it where it was going.
Since then, even at the height of the fighting, the two commanders have agreed to a ceasefire in order to exchange prisoners.This ceasefire had an air of celebration, and General Moncada took advantage of the opportunity to teach Colonel Aureliano Buendía how to play chess.The two became good friends.
They even imagined the possibility of coordinating the popular forces of both parties, eliminating the influence of soldiers and politicians, in order to establish a humane regime that absorbed the best of both parties' doctrines.After the war, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was born and died on the rugged trails of constant uprisings, and General Moncada was appointed mayor of Macondo.He put on his civilian clothes and replaced the soldiers with unarmed policemen.He made everyone obey the armistice law, and he also gave pensions to the families of some Liberals who died in the war.He succeeded in elevating Macondo to the city, and thus became its first mayor.He created an atmosphere of mutual trust that reminded everyone of the war as a grotesque nightmare of the past.Father Nicanor, who had been overwhelmed by liver fever, was replaced by Father Coronel, who was called "Chuba" because he was a veteran of the First Confederate War.Bruno Crespi married Amparo Mocotte, and his toy and musical instrument shop continued to prosper.He built a theater that even the Spanish troupes included in their touring itineraries.This is a large open-air hall with wooden armchairs, a velvet curtain decorated with Greek masks, and three lion-head-shaped box office holes with open mouths to sell theater tickets.
It was during this period that the school buildings were rebuilt.Don Melchor Escalona, an old teacher sent from the swamp, was in charge of the school.With the approval of their parents, he let the students who didn't study hard walk on their knees on the sharp saltpeter ground in the yard, and gave them chili peppers to the students who talked presumptuously.José Arcadio Segundo, Prime Minister of Aureliano Segundo, the twins of Santa Sofia de la Peda who volunteered to attend the school, were the first students to sit in the classroom, each with a Small blackboards, chalk and small aluminum pots with their names engraved on them.
Remedios inherited her mother's flawless appearance, and Remedios the Beauty began to be famous.
In spite of the passage of time, in spite of the mourning and mourning, in spite of all the sorrows that smoldered in her heart, Úrsula did not grow old.With the help of Santa Sofia de la Peda, she injected new vitality into her dim sum business. In a few years, she not only recovered the money spent by her son in the war, but also used pure Jin filled the gourds one by one and buried them in the ground of the bedroom. "As long as God allows me to live," she would often say, "there will be no shortage of money in this madhouse." That was the situation in Aureliano José's house when he returned from his desertion with the Federal Army of Nicaragua.After his desertion, he got a job on a German ship.When he appeared in the kitchen at home, he was as strong as a horse, with dark brown hairy skin that looked like an Indian.He secretly made up his mind to marry Amaranta.
When Amaranta saw him come in, she guessed why he had come home before he could speak.Neither of them dared to look at each other while eating.But two weeks later Aureliano José looked Amaranta in the eyes and said in front of Úrsula: "I have missed you so much." She was wary of meeting him unexpectedly and kept Remedios the Beauty with her as much as possible. One day when her nephew asked her how long the black bandages were going to be on her hands, she was very sorry for the flush on her face. Secretly angry because she interpreted the question as a hint of her virginity.She'd bolted the door of her room every night since he'd come home, but many days passed and she heard the snoring in the next room so peacefully every night that she didn't pay much attention to such a discreet act of locking the door. up.At that time Aureliano José had been home for almost two months, when Amaranta noticed him in the room late one night.But instead of running away or screaming as she had planned, she wallowed in a relaxed and tender emotion.She found him slipping into the tent, as he had done when he was a child, as he had always done.She couldn't help but break out in a cold sweat, and her teeth chattered. "Go!" she murmured to him, wondering and out of breath, "go away, or I will call someone." But Aureliano José knew what he was going to do by then. , he is no longer a child who is afraid of the dark, but an old horse that has not experienced the battle.From that night on, this silent and fruitless battle began again, and it lasted until dawn. "I am your aunt," Amaranta murmured, exhausted, "almost your mother, not only in terms of age, but also because you are almost as close to breastfeeding me as possible." Rileliano always ran away at dawn and returned at midnight the next day, and when he was sure that Amaranta had not barred the door, he became even more angry.In the past days, he missed her all the time.In Hei Cuyue's room in captured villages and towns, especially in those very remote villages, he always saw her beautiful figure.In the dry smell of blood from the bandages of the wounded, in the momentary fear of facing the danger of death, he always felt that she was really in front of him.That time when he secretly left her, he not only wanted to keep her far away, but also wanted to dispel his unreasonable thoughts about her with what his comrades called reckless and irrational cruelty.But the more he dumped her image on the ashes of the war, the more the war itself resembled Amaranta.Seeking a way of destroying her by his own death, he suffered exile until he heard the old story told of a man who married a woman who was not only his cousin but also his aunt, and as a result his The son became his own grandfather.
"So a man can marry his aunt?" asked Aureliano José in amazement.
"Not only with my aunt," replied a soldier, "but we are now fighting this war against priests so that a man may even marry his mother."
After fifteen days he deserted.He saw Amaranta more haggard, more melancholy and more serious than he imagined, because in fact she had sailed past the last cape of her life, but in the darkness of the room she was Hotter and more provocative than ever, more provocative in its aggressive defiance. "You're nothing," said Amaranta, cornered by her hunting dogs. "I never heard of you doing something like that with your aunt before getting permission from the Pope." Aureliano José agreed. Must go to Rome, promise to walk Europe on knees and kiss the pope's slippers, if she will lower the hanging bridge.
"Not only for that," Amaranta snapped at him, "but also because the son born will have a pig's tail."
Aureliano José turned a deaf ear to this.
"It doesn't matter if you give birth to a pangolin," he begged.
One morning the passion he had been suppressing finally became unbearable and Aureliano José went to Catarino's hotel.He met a woman, although her breasts were shriveled, but she was gentle and frivolous, which instantly relieved his greed.Amaranta took a contemptuous attitude when Aureliano José thought about it.He saw her in the corridor, sewing on the hand sewing machine (a machine which she had learned to operate with admirable dexterity), and ignored her, not even said a word.But Amaranta felt as if a stone had been removed from her heart. She didn't understand why she thought of Colonel Gerineldo Márquez again, why she vividly recalled those afternoons playing Chinese chess, why She even wanted him to be her roommate.Aureliano José had no idea how much ground he had lost.One evening he could bear no longer his feigned indifference and went back to Amaranta's room.
But she refused unequivocally, with uncompromising determination, and the bolt of her door has remained locked ever since.
A few months after Aureliano José's return, a plump woman who smelled of jasmine came to the house with a boy of about five years old.She said that the child was the son of Colonel Aureliano Buendia and that she had brought him to ask Úrsula to christen the child.No one doubted who the unnamed child belonged to. He was exactly the same as when the colonel was taken to see what ice was.The woman said that the child was born with his eyes open and looked like an adult, especially the way he stared at things without blinking was really scary. "It's the same thing," said Úrsula, "just one look is enough to make the chair overturn." They christened the child and named him Aureliano, taking his mother's surname because according to the According to the law, the father's surname cannot be used without the approval of the biological father.General Moncada became the child's godfather.Although Amaranta repeatedly wanted to keep the child in her custody, the child's mother refused.
Úrsula did not know at that time the custom of sending maidens to the quarters of warriors, just as hens are sent to mate with good-bred roosters.But during the year she understood: nine more sons of Colonel Aureliano Buendía were brought into the house to be christened.
The oldest of these children was in his early teens, a green-eyed, dark-skinned foreigner who had nothing in common with his father's family.Children of all ages and colors were brought in, but all boys, and all had an air of solitude that left no doubt about their kinship to the family.Only two of the kids stood out from the group.One looked much older than his age, and he broke several flower pots and some dishes, for his hands seemed to have a strange destructive power, and everything broke when they touched him. .The other had fair hair, light blue eyes like his mother's, and long curly hair hanging down like a girl's.He entered the house familiarly, as if he had grown up in this house since he was a child.He went straight to a large box in Úrsula's room and demanded: "I want a wind-up dancing doll." Úrsula was startled.She opened the case, rummaged among the old, dusty things of Melquíades's day, and finally found, in a pair of socks, the clockwork dancing doll, which belonged to Pietro Crespi. I brought it the first time, but no one remembered it after that.In twelve years, the family baptized all the colonel's sons scattered throughout the war zone with the name Aureliano and their mother's surname, seventeen in all.At first, Úrsula stuffed their pockets with money and Amaranta wanted them to stay, but in the end, Úrsula settled for just one gift and Amaranta just acted as a gift. Look at their godmother. "We'll just christen them," Úrsula said, writing down their names, their mother's address, and the place and date of the children's births in a small notebook. "It's up to Aureliano to settle the bill. When he comes back, let him make up his mind." She spoke to General Moncada at lunch once, and was so dazed by the Colonel. She wished that Colonel Aureliano Buendía would come back once and call all his sons to the house.
"Don't worry, ma'am," said General Moncada inscrutablely. "He'll be back sooner than you think."
What General Moncada knew and would not reveal at dinner was that Colonel Aureliano Buendía was already leading one of the longest, most thorough and brutal uprisings he had ever planned.
The situation suddenly became tense, as it had been in the months before the outbreak of the first war.
The cockfight, which was personally encouraged by the mayor, ceased.Captain Achilles Ricardo, chief of the city defense, has actually taken over the municipal power.Liberals accused him of being a troublemaker.
"Something terrible is about to happen," Úrsula said to Aureliano José. "Don't go out into the streets after six o'clock." Such entreaties were in vain.Aureliano José, like Arcadio before him, had long since disobeyed her.At home, he was free from the distractions of everyday needs, which seemed to have awakened in him the lustful, idle instincts of his uncle José Arcadio.His passion for Amaranta had disappeared without a trace.A little bit of a full day, playing billiards, sleeping with this woman and that woman overnight, chatting to relieve loneliness.He tried his best to play Úrsula's loopholes, hoping that she would forget where the money was.In the end, he never went home except to change clothes. "It's all the same," Úrsula sighed sadly. "At first they were all fine, obedient and disciplined, as if they wouldn't kill a fly, but as soon as the beard grows, it ruins everything." In contrast to Arcadio who never knew his true origin, Aureliano José knew that he was the son of Pilar Ternera, who hung a hammock for him so that He goes to her house to take a nap.They are not only mother and son, but also companions in solitude.Pilar Ternera was hopeless, her laughter had become as dull as an organ, her breasts had slumped under the constant playful caressing, her body and thighs were dead. A victim of the unalterable fate of the shared woman, who grows old but does not suffer inwardly.Fat, fat, quick-talking, with the pompous air of a noble housewife in distress, she discarded the futile fantasies foreshadowed by her cards, and found in other people's love the solace of self-explanation.In the house where Aureliano José took his siesta, the girls of the neighborhood brought their casual lovers for trysts. "Pila, I want to borrow your room." They greeted each other simply after they had stepped into the room. "That goes without saying!" Pyrrha always answered.When someone was present, she explained it like this: "Because I know people are happy in bed, so I am happy too."
She never took money from others, and never refused to facilitate others, just like the countless men who never refused to come to her until the twilight of her old age.They gave her neither money nor love, only a little pleasure sometimes.Her five daughters, all heirs of the fiery seed, have fallen on the rough road of life since their girlhood.Of the two sons she raised, one was killed in the army of Colonel Aureliano Buendía, and the other was killed when he was fourteen years old in a village in the swamp trying to steal a basket of hens. Captured after being wounded.In a sense, Aureliano José was the tall, dark man that the King of the Cupflowers had claimed for half a century, and like all the emissaries of the cards, when she felt it, He has been marked with death.She saw this from the cards.
"Don't go out tonight," she said to him, "you're going to sleep here, and Carmelita Montière has begged my magistrate to come back to your room."
Aureliano José did not understand the depth of the request contained in this dedication.
"You told her to wait for me in the middle of the night," he said.
He had gone to the theater where a Spanish troupe had announced The Dagger of Zorro, but it was actually Soria's work.On the orders of Captain Achilles Ricardo, they changed the title, because the Liberals called the Conservatives "Goths."It was only when Aureliano José was handing over the tickets at the entrance of the theater that Captain Aquiles Ricardo and two soldiers with guns were searching the theatergoers. "Listen, Captain," Aureliano José warned him. "There is no man born who would touch me." The captain ordered a forcible search.Aureliano Joséin turned and ran without a weapon.
The soldiers disobeyed the captain's order to shoot them. "He's from the Buendía family," someone among the soldiers explained to him.The captain was furious, snatched the soldier's gun, pushed away the crowd and rushed to the middle of the street, aiming the gun.
"They're all worthless girls!" the captain cursed. "I wish he was Colonel Aureliano Buendia!"
Carmelita Montière, a girl of twenty, had just bathed in orange blossom water and had sprinkled rosemary leaves on Pilar Ternera's bed when the gunfire rang out.Aureliano José must have been lucky enough to experience in her the happiness that Amaranta denied him, and he was destined to have seven children by her and die of old age in her arms, but the bullet from the rifle went into the His back, pierced out, smashed his chest, and he fulfilled the bad omen of the cards.Captain Aquiles Ricardo was in fact also doomed to die that night, and sure enough he died four hours before Aureliano José.As soon as he fired, he was knocked down by two bullets fired at the same time. Who fired the two shots has never been found out.Shouts from the crowd shook the night sky.
"Long live the Liberal Party! Long live Colonel Aureliano Buendía!"
At twelve o'clock in the night, Aureliano José stopped bleeding.Carmelita Montière saw a blank on the cards that predicted his future, when more than four hundred people marched past the theater door, pouring bullets from their revolvers on the abandoned Achilles On the corpse of Captain Ricardo, a team of patrolmen had to be called to carry the corpse crushed by lead bullets onto a stretcher. A loaf of bread soaked in water.
General José Raquel Moncada, annoyed by the recklessness of the regular army, exerted his political influence, donned the uniform again, and assumed military and political power in the city of Macondo.But he doesn't count on his compromise to stop all the inevitable.
Conflicting news arrived in September: the government claimed it was still in control of the situation across the country, while the Liberals had secret intelligence that an armed uprising had broken out in the interior.The authorities did not recognize the state of war until the court-martial had publicly announced the trial in absentia of Colonel Aureliano Buendía and sentenced him to death by proclamation.The order said that the first troops to catch him could execute him. "That means he has returned," Úrsula said cheerfully to General Moncada, but the general himself knew nothing about it.
In fact, Colonel Aureliano Buendia returned to the country more than a month ago.The news that circulated earlier said one way and another. General Moncada estimated that he was still in the most remote place, so he did not believe it until the official announcement that Colonel Aureliano Buendía had occupied the two coastal provinces. He has returned home. "I congratulate you, old lady," he said to Úrsula, showing her the telegram: "you will see him here shortly." Come. "Uncle, what do you do?" she asked.General Moncada has asked himself this question several times.
"Old aunt, do the same as him." He replied, "Fulfill your responsibilities."
At dawn on October 1, Colonel Aureliano Buendia led more than a thousand well-equipped soldiers to attack Macondo.Macondo's garrison was ordered to resist to the end.At noon, when General Moncada was eating with Úrsula, a shell from the rebels shook the city and smashed the gate of the municipal treasury. "Their equipment is as good as ours," General Moncada sighed, "but their fighting morale is higher than ours." At two o'clock in the afternoon, the cannons on both sides shook the ground, and General Moncada bid farewell to Wusu Well, he knew now that he was fighting a hopeless battle.
"May God keep Aureliano at home tonight," he said. "If that's the case, please hug him for me, because I don't want to see him again."
That night, General Moncadie was caught trying to escape from Macondo.Before that, he wrote a long letter to Colonel Aureliano Buendía, in which he recalled their shared desire to humanize the war and wished him the best in his fight against the corruption of the military in both parties. A decisive victory over the ambitions of politicians and politicians.Colonel Aureliano Buendía had lunch with him the next day at Úrsula's, where he was to be placed under house arrest pending a decision on his fate by a revolutionary court-martial.This is a family gathering.But as the two rivals look back, oblivious to the ongoing war, Úrsula has an ominous feeling that his son is an intruder.She had felt this way when she saw her son enter the house under the escort of a group of soldiers, who searched the rooms up and down, and did not stop until they were sure that there was no danger.Colonel Aureliano Buendía not only acquiesced to these actions, but even issued very strict orders: no one, including Úrsula, would be allowed until his guards had placed a guard around the house. Do not approach within three meters of him.He wore a plain denim uniform, without rank sash.On the feet are a pair of leather boots with spurs, which are covered with mud and blood.There was a pistol in his waist, the holster was open, and one hand was always pressed on the handle of the gun, showing the same tension, vigilance and determination as his eyes.On his head, the forehead was deeply sunken, as if it had been roasted by a slow fire.His face had been cracked by the salt water of the Caribbean, and a metallic crust had grown over it.He resisted the imminent aging with vigorous energy, and this energy seemed to be related to his inner sternness.He appeared taller than when he left home, but paler and more angular, showing the first signs of nostalgia. "My God!" said Úrsula to herself, surprised. "He seems capable of anything now." She was right.The Aztec turban he brought to Amaranta, the reminiscences he had at lunch, the amusing anecdotes he told were but a remnant of his old temper.As soon as the order to bury the war dead on both sides in a single pit was carried out, he called Colonel Roque Carnicello to hasten the work of the court-martial, while he himself plunged into the onerous business of completely reforming the old system. The reforms would sweep away the fabric of the resurgent Conservative regime. "We have to get ahead of those in the party who are engaged in politics," he told his aides. "When they open their eyes and look at reality, what they see is a fait accompli." It was at this time that he decided to review a hundred年来的地契，从丽发现了他哥哥霍塞·阿卡迪奥一系列合法化了的蛮横行径。他一笔划掉了那些凭证记录。最后，出于礼貌，他放下手头的事务，抽出一小时时间去访问雷蓓卡，让她知道他的决定。
在屋内阴影里，那位孤独的寡妇只是旧时的一个鬼影。她曾对上校那压抑的情爱守口如瓶，她的执拗也救过他的命。只见她一身黑服，扣子一直紧紧地扣到手背。她的心早已成了死灰，对战争的事几乎一无所知。奥雷良诺·布恩地亚上校觉得她的骨头里有磷光透出，透过闪烁着磷火的空气，看到她在凝滞的大气里移动，空中依然散发着幽微的火药味。开始，他劝她忍悲节哀，劝她让屋内通通风，劝她对霍塞·阿卡迪奥的死宽恕世人。然而雷蓓卡早已超然于一切虚荣之外了，当她在泥土味中，在皮埃特罗·克雷斯庇的芬芳的信笺里，在丈夫地动山摇般的床上徒劳地寻找这种虚荣之后，却在这幢房屋里找到了安宁。在这所屋子里，一种不可抑止的联想力使她回忆起过去的事情来历历在目，它们象活生生的人物在关闭的房间里悠然穿行。雷蓓卡在藤摇椅里挺了挺身子，凝视着奥雷良诺·布恩地亚上校，倒象他才是旧时的幽灵。她对霍塞·阿卡迪奥强占来的土地将归还其合法主人这一消息一点没有激动。
“照你安排的办吧，奥雷良诺。”她叹了口气：“我过去认为、现在更证实了你是一个不念亲情的人。”
在结束审核地契的同时，由赫里奈多·马尔克斯上校领导的即决审判也告完毕。法庭决定对所有被革命军俘虏的政府军军官执行枪决。军事法庭审判的最后一个人是霍塞·拉克尔·蒙卡达将军。乌苏拉插手了。“他是咱们马贡多有史以来最好的统治者。”她对奥雷良诺·布恩地亚上校说：“他的心肠有多好，他对我们有多亲切，这些就不用我多说了，因为你比谁都知道得清楚。”奥雷良诺·布恩地亚上校不满地向她瞥了一眼：
“我可不能擅自行使法庭的权力。”他反驳道：“如果您有什么要说的，请到军事法庭去说吧。”
乌苏拉不但真的到军事法庭去说了，而且还对所有家住马贡多的革命军军官的母亲们也说了。创建马贡多的老妪们——她们中有的还参加过翻山越岭的艰险历程——一个接一个地颂扬着蒙卡达将军的恩德。乌苏拉最后一个发言。她那悲怆而庄重的神态、她名字的份量、她激昂慷慨和令人信服的言醉曾一时动摇了审判过程中的形势。“你们非常严肃地对待这场可怕的游戏，你们确也干得不错，因为你们是在履行自己的责任。”她对法庭的成员这样说着。“但是有一点你们不要忘记，只要上帝还让我们活着，我们就仍然是你们的母亲。不管你们多么革命，我们都有权因你们的大逆不道而扒下你们的裤子，狠狠地给你们一顿鞭子！”在变成军营的学校里，她的话音未落，法官们便退庭去商量了。半夜时分，蒙卡达将军还是被判处了死刑。
尽管乌苏拉大动肝火、高声责骂，奥雷良诺·布恩地亚上校还是拒绝改变判决。拂晓前不久，他到牢房去看望这位被判了死刑的将军。
“伙计，你得记着，”上校对他说，“不是我要枪毙你，枪毙你的是革命。”
“去你的吧，老兄。”他回了一句。
从回马贡多到现在，奥雷良诺·布恩地亚上校还没找到机会同他真诚相见。他对蒙卡达将军一下子苍老得这么厉害、对他颤巍巍的双手和等候死亡来临的不寻常的顺从态度很是吃惊，不由得深深地鄙视起自己来。这种感情中混杂着某种怜悯的心意。
“你比我更清楚，”他说，“所有的军事法庭都只不过是一出把戏，实际上你是在代人受过，偿付别人的罪孽。这次，我们将不惜一切代价去赢得战争。要是你处在我的地位，还不是一样这么干吗？”
蒙卡达将军欠起身来，用衬衣的下摆擦拭他那厚厚的玳瑁边眼镜。“或许是这样。”他承认。“但是我关心的，并不是你要枪毙我，因为归根结底，对于象我们这样的人来说，这是自然的归宿。”他把眼镜放在床上，取下表链上的怀表。“我所关心的是，”他又补充道，“你如此憎恶军人，跟他们打了这么多的仗，对他们琢磨了这么久，到头来还是成了同他们一样的人。人生中没有比这更卑贱的理想了。”他取下结婚戒指和圣女雷梅苔丝勋章，跟眼镜和怀表放在一起。
“这样下去，”他作结论说，“你不仅将成为我国历史上最暴虐无道、最残忍凶狠的独裁者，而且还会杀了我的乌苏拉大婶以宽慰你的良心。”
奥雷良诺·布恩地亚上校站着，不劝声色地听他讲。蒙卡达将军把眼镜、勋章、怀表和戒指交给他，换了一种声调说话。
“不过，我叫你来并不是要跟你吵架。”他说，“我想请你把这些东西交给我的妻子。”
“她还在马努雷？”
“还在马努雷。”蒙卡达将军肯定地回答，“还在教堂后面你去送过信的那幢房子里。”
“我很乐意为你效劳，霍塞·拉克尔。”奥雷良诺·布恩地亚上校说。
当他走出屋子，迎面扑来缕缕蓝色的雾霭，他的脸被雾打湿了，就象从前的那个早晨那样。这时他才明白为什么他把执刑的地点安排在院子里，而不是公墓的土墙前。排列在门口的行刑队，向他行国家元首礼。
“你们可以去把他带出来了。”他命令道。
Notes:
Notes: