úrsula had to make a great effort to fulfill her promise to die when it cleared. the waves of lucidity that were so scarce during the rains became more frequent after august, when an and wind began to blow and suffocated the rose bushes and petrified the piles of mud, and ended up scattering over macon-do the burning dust that covered the rusted zinc roofs and the age-old almond trees forever. úrsula cried in lamentation when she discovered that for more than three years she had been a plaything for the children. she washed her painted face, took off the strips of brightly colored cloth, the dried lizards and frogs, and the rosaries and old arab necklaces that they had hung all over her body, and for the first time since the death of amaranta she got up out of bed without anybody's help to join in the family life once more. the spirit of her invincible heart guided her through the shadows. those who noticed her stumbling and who bumped into the archangelic arm she kept raised at head level thought that she was having trouble body, but they still did not think she was blind. she did not need to see to realize that the flower beds, cultivated with such care since the first rebuilding, had been destroyed by the rain and ruined by aureli-ano segun-do's excavations, and that the walls and the cement of the floors were cracked, the furniture mushy and discolored, the doors off their hinges, and the family menaced by a spirit of resignation and despair that was inconceivable in her time. feeling her way along through the empty bedrooms she perceived the continuous rumble of the termites as they carved the wood, the snipping of the moths in the clothes closets, and the devastating noise of the enormous red ants that had prospered during the deluge and were undermining the foundations of the house. one day she opened the trunk with the saints and had to ask santa sofía de la piedad to get off her body the cockroaches that jumped out and that had already turned the clothing to dust. "a person can't live in neglect like this," she said. "if we go on like this we'll be devoured by animals." from then on she did not have a moment of repose. up before dawn, she would use anybody available, even the children. she put the few articles of clothing that were still usable out into the sun, she drove the cockroaches off with powerful insecticide attacks, she scratched out the veins that the termites had made on doors and windows and asphyxiated the ants in their anthills quicklime. the fever of restoration finally brought her to the forgotten rooms. she cleared out the rubble cobwebs in the room where josé arcadio buendía had lost his wits looking for the philosopher's stone, she put the silver shop which had been upset by the soldiers in order, and lastly she asked for the keys to melquíades' room to see what state it was in. faithful to the wishes of josé arcadio segun-do, who had forbidden anyone to come in unless there was a clear indication that he had died, santa sofía de la piedad tried all kinds of subterfuges to throw úrsula off the track. but so inflexible was her determination not to surrender even the most remote corner of the house to the insects that she knocked down every obstacle in her path, and after three days of insistence she succeeded in getting them to open the door for her. she had to hold on to the doorjamb so that the stench would not knock her over, but she needed only two seconds to remember that the school-girls' seventy-two chamberpots were in there and that on one of the rainy nights a patrol of soldiers had searched the house looking for josé arcadio segun-do and had been unable to find him.
"lord save us!" she exclaimed, as if she could see everything. "so much trouble teaching you good manners and you end up living like a pig."
josé arcadio segun-do was still reading over the parchments. the only thing visible in the intricate tangle of hair was the teeth striped with green dime and his motionless eyes. when he recognized his great--grandmother's voice he turned his head toward the door, tried to smile, and without knowing it repeated an old phrase of úrsula's.
"what did you expect?" he murmured. "time passes."
"that's how it goes," úrsula said, "but not so much."
when she said it she realized that she was giving the same reply that colonel aureli-ano buendía had given in his death cell, and once again she shuddered with the evidence that time was not passing, as she had just admitted, but that it was turning in a circle. but even then she did not give resignation a chance. she scolded josé arcadio segun-do as if he were a child and insisted that he take a bath and shave and lend a hand in fixing up the house. the simple idea of abandoning the room that had given him peace terrified josé arcadio segun-do. he shouted that there was no human power capable of making him go out because he did not want to see the train with two hundred cars loaded with dead people which left macon-do every day at dusk on its way to the sea. "they were all of those who were at the station," he shouted. "three thousand four hundred eight." only then did úrsula realize that he was in a world of shadows more impenetrable than hers, as unreachable and solitary as that of his great-grandfather. she left him in the room, but she succeeded in getting them to leave the padlock off, clean it every day, throw the chamberpots away except for one, and to keep josé arcadio segun-do as clean and presentable as his great--grandfather had been during his long captivity under the chestnut tree. at first fernanda interpreted that bustle as an attack of senile madness and it was difficult for her to suppress her exasperation. but about that time josé arcadio told that he planned to come to macon-do from rome before taking his final vows, and the good news filled her with such enthusiasm that from morning to night she would be seen watering the flowers four times a day so that her son would not have a bad impression of the house. it was that same incentive which induced her to speed up her correspondence with the invisible doctors and to replace the pots of ferns and oregano and the begonias on the porch even before úrsula found out that they had been destroyed by aureli-ano segun-do's exterminating fury. later on she sold the silver service and bought ceramic dishes, pewter bowls and soup spoons, and alpaca tablecloths, and with them brought poverty to the cupboards that had been accustomed to india company chinaware and bohemian crystal. úrsula always tried to go a step beyond. "open the windows and the doors," she shouted. "cook some meat and fish, buy the largest turtles around, let strangers come and spread their mats in the corners and urinate in the rose bushes and sit down to eat as many times as they want and belch and rant and muddy everything with their boots, and let them do whatever they want to us, because that's the only way to drive off rain." but it was a vain illusion. she was too old then and living on borrowed time to repeat the miracle of the little candy animals, and none of her descendants had inherited her strength. the house stayed closed on fernanda's orders.
aureli-ano segun-do, who had taken his trunks back to the house of petra cotes, barely had enough means to see that the family did not starve to death. with the raffling of the mule, petra cotes and he bought some more animals with which they managed to set up a primitive lottery business. aureli-ano segun-do would go from house to house selling the tickets that he himself painted with colored ink to make them more attractive and convincing, and perhaps he did not realize that many people bought them out of gratitude and most of them out of pity. nevertheless, even the most pitying purchaser was getting a chance to win a pig for twenty cents or a calf for thirty-two, and they became so hopeful that on tuesday nights petra cotes's courtyard overflowed with people waiting for the moment when a child picked at random drew the winning number from a bag. it did not take long to become a weekly fair, for at dusk food and drink stands would be set up in the courtyard and many of those who were favored would slaughter the animals they had won right there on the condition that someone else supply the liquor and music, so that without having wanted to, aureli-ano segun-do suddenly found himself playing the accordion again and participating in modest tourneys of voracity. those humble replicas of the revelry of former times served to show aureli-ano segun-do himself how much his spirits had declined and to what a degree his skill as a masterful carouser had dried up. he was a changed man. the two hundred forty pounds that he had attained during the days when he had been challenged by the elephant had been reduced to one hundred fifty-six; the glowing and bloated tortoise face had turned into that of an iguana, and he was always on the verge of boredom and fatigue. for petra cotes, however, he had never been a better man than at that time, perhaps because the pity that he inspired was mixed with love, and because of the feeling of solidarity that misery aroused in both of them. the broken-down bed ceased to be the scene of wild activities and was changed into an intimate refuge. freed of the repetitious mirrors, which had been auctioned off to buy animals for the lottery, and from the lewd damasks and velvets, which the mule had eaten, they would stay up very late with the innocence of two sleepless grandparents, taking advantage of the time to draw up accounts and put away pennies which they formerly wasted just for the sake of it. sometimes the cock's crow would find them piling unpiling coins, taking a bit away from here to put there, to that this bunch would be enough to keep fernanda happy and that would be for amaranta úrsula's shoes, and that other one for santa sofía de la piedad, who had not had a new dress since the time of all the noise, and this to order the coffin if úrsula died, and this for the coffee which was going up a cent a pound in price every three months, and this for the sugar which sweetened less every day, and this for the lumber which was still wet from the rains, and this other one for the paper and the colored ink to make tickets with, and what was left over to pay off the winner of the april calf whose hide they had miraculously saved when it came down with a symptomatic carbuncle just when all of the numbers in the raffle had already been sold. those rites of poverty were so pure that they nearly always set aside the largest share for fernanda, and they did not do so out of remorse or charity, but because her wellbeing was more important to them than their own. what was really happening to them, although neither of them realized it, was that they both thought of fernanda as the daughter that they would have liked to have and never did, to the point where on a certain occasion they resigned themselves to eating crumbs for three days, so that she could buy a dutch tablecloth. nevertheless, no matter how much they killed themselves with work, no matter how much money they eked out, and no matter how many schemes they thought of, their guardian angels were asleep with fatigue while they put in coins and took them out trying to get just enough to live with. during the waking hours when the accounts were bad. they wondered what had happened in the world for the animals not to breed with the same drive as before, why money slipped through their fingers, and why people who a short time before had burned rolls of bills in the carousing considered it highway robbery to charge twelve cents for a raffle of six hens. aureli-ano segun-do thought without saying so that the evil was not in the world but in some hidden place in the mysterious heart of petra cotes, where something had happened during the deluge that had turned the animals sterile and made money scarce. intrigued by that enigma, he dug so deeply into her sentiments that in search of interest he found love, because by trying to make her love him he ended up falling in love with her. petra cotes, for her part, loved him more and more as she felt his love increasing, and that was how in the ripeness of autumn she began to believe once more in the youthful superstition that poverty was the servitude of love. both looked back then on the wild revelry, the gaudy wealth, the unbridled fornication as an annoyance and they lamented that it had cost them so much of their lives to fund the paradise of shared solitude. madly in love after so many years of sterile complicity, they enjoyed the miracle of loving each other as much at the table as in bed, and they grew to be so happy that even when they were two wornout old people they kept on blooming like little children and playing together like dogs.
the raffles never got very far. at first aureli-ano segun-do would spend three days of the week shut up in what had been his rancher's office drawing ticket after ticket, painting with a fair skill a red cow, a green pig, or a group of blue hens, according to the animal being raffled, and he would sketch out a good imitation of printed numbers and the name that petra cotes thought good to call the business: divine providence raffles. but with time he felt so tired after drawing up to two thousand tickets a week that he had the animals, the name, and the numbers put on rubber stamps, and then the work was reduced to moistening them on pads of different colors. in his last years it occurred to him to substitute riddles for the numbers so that the prize could be shared by all of those who guessed it, but the system turned out to be so complicated and was open to so much suspicion that he gave it up after the second attempt.
aureli-ano segun-do was so busy trying to maintain the prestige of his raffles that he barely had time to see the children. fernanda put amaranta úrsula in a small private school where they admitted only six girls, but she refused to allow aureli-ano to go to public school. she considered that she had already relented too much in letting him leave the room. besides, the schools in those days accepted only the legitimate offspring of catholic marriages on the birth certificate that had been pinned to aureli-ano's clothing when they brought him to the house he was registered as a foundling. so he remained shut in at the mercy of santa sofía de la piedad's loving eyes and úrsula's mental quirks, learning in the narrow world of the house whatever his grandmothers explained to him. he was delicate, thin, with a curiosity that unnerved the adults, but unlike the inquisitive and sometimes clairvoyant look that the colonel had at his age, his look was blinking and somewhat distracted. while amaranta úrsula was in kindergarten, he would hunt earthworms torture insects in the garden. but once when fernanda caught him putting scorpions in a box to put in úrsula's bed, she locked him up in meme's old room, where he spent his solitary hours looking through the pictures in the encyclopedia. úrsula found him there one afternoon when she was going about sprinkling the house with distilled water and a bunch of nettles, and in spite of the fact that she had been with him many times she asked him who he was.
she had confused him with her son again, because the hot wind that came after the deluge and had brought occasional waves of lucidity to úrsula's brain had passed. she never got her reason back. when she went into the bedroom she found petronila iguarán there with the bothersome crinolines and the beaded jacket that she put on for formal visits, and she found tranquilina maria miniata alacoque buendía, her grand-mother, fanning herself with a peacock feather in her invalid's rocking chair, and her great-grandfather aure-liano arcadio buendía, with his imitation dolman of the viceregal guard, and aureli-ano iguarán, her father, who had invented a prayer to make the worms shrivel up and drop off cows, and her timid mother, and her cousin with the pig's tail, and josé arcadio buendía, and her dead sons, all sitting in chairs lined up against the wall as if it were a wake and not a visit. she was tying a colorful string chatter together, commenting on things from many separate places and many different times, so that when amaranta úrsula returned from school aureli-ano grew tired of the encyclopedia, they would find her sitting on her bed, talking to herself and lost in a labyrinth of dead people. "fire!" she shouted once in terror and for an instant panic spread through the house, but what she was telling about was the burning of a barn that she had witnessed when she was four years old. she finally mixed up the past with the present in such a way that in the two or three waves of lucidity that she had before she died, no one knew for certain whether she was speaking about she felt or what she remembered. little by little she was shrinking, turning into a fetus, becoming mummified in life to the point that in her last months she was a cherry raisin lost inside of her nightgown, and the arm that she always kept raised looked like the paw of a marimonda monkey. she was motionless for several days, and santa sofía de la piedad had to shake her to convince herself that she was alive and sat her on her lap to feed her a few spoonfuls of sugar water. she looked like a newborn old woman. amaranta úrsula aureli-ano would take her in and out of the bedroom, they would lay her on the altar to see if she was any larger than the christ child, and one afternoon they hid her in a closet in the pantry where the rats could have eaten her. one palm sunday they went into the bedroom while fernanda was in church and carried úrsula out by the neck and ankles.
"poor great-great-grandmother," amaranta úrsula said. "she died of old age."
úrsula was startled.
"i'm alive!" she said.
"you can see." amaranta úrsula said, suppressing her laughter, "that she's not even breathing."
"i'm talking!" úrsula shouted.
"she can't even talk," aureli-ano said. "she died like a little cricket."
then úrsula gave in to the evidence. "my god," she exclaimed in a low voice. "so this is what it's like to be dead." she started an endless, stumbling, deep prayer that lasted more than two days, and that by tuesday had degenerated into a hodgepodge of requests to god and bits of practical advice to stop the red ants from bringing the house down, to keep the lamp burning by remedios' daguerreotype, and never to let any buendía marry a person of the same blood because their children would be born with the tail of a pig. aureli-ano segun-do tried to take advantage of her delirium to get her to ten him where the gold was buried, but his entreaties were useless once more "when the owner appears," úrsula said, "god will illuminate him so that he will find it." santa sofía de la piedad had the certainty that they would find her dead from one moment to the next, because she noticed during those days a certain confusion in nature: the roses smelled like goosefoot, a pod of chick peas fell down and the beans lay on the ground in a perfect geometrical pattern in the shape of a starfish and one night she saw a row of luminous orange disks pass across the sky.
they found her dead on the morning of good friday. the last time that they had helped her calculate her age, during the time the banana company, she had estimated it as between one hundred fifteen and one hundred twenty-two. they buried her in a coffin that was not much larger than the basket in which aureli-ano had arrived, and very few people were at the funeral, partly because there wet not many left who remembered her, and partly because it was so hot that noon that the birds in their confusion were running into walls like day pigeons and breaking through screens to die in the bedrooms.
at first they thought it was a plague. housewives were exhausted from sweeping away so many dead birds, especially at siesta time, and the men dumped them into the river by the cartload. on easter sunday the hundred--year-old father antonio isabel stated from the pulpit that the death of the birds was due to the evil influence of the wandering jew, whom he himself had seen the night before. he described him as a cross between a billy goat and a female heretic, an infernal beast whose breath scorched the air and whose look brought on the birth of monsters in newlywed women. there were not many who paid attention to his apocalyptic talk, for the town was convinced that the priest was rambling because of his age. but one woman woke everybody up at dawn on wednesday because she found the tracks of a biped with a cloven hoof. they were so clear and unmistakable that those who went to look at them had no doubt about the existence of a fearsome creature similar to the one described by the parish priest and they got together to set traps in their courtyards. that was how they managed to capture it. two weeks after úrsula's death, petra cotes and aureli-ano segun-do woke up frightened by the especially loud bellowing of a calf that was coming from nearby. when they got there a group of men were already pulling the monster off the sharpened stakes they had set in the bottom of a pit covered with dry leaves, and it stopped lowing. it was as heavy as an ox in spite of the fact that it was no taller than a young steer, and a green and greasy liquid flowed from its wounds. its body was covered with rough hair, plagued with small ticks, and the skin was hardened with the scales of a remora fish, but unlike the priest's description, its human parts were more like those of a sickly angel than a man, for its hands were tense and agile, its eyes large and gloomy, and on its shoulder blades it had the scarredover and calloused stumps of powerful wings which must have been chopped off by a woodsman's ax. they hung it to an almond tree in the square by its ankles so that everyone could see it, and when it began to rot they burned it in a bonfire, for they could not determine whether its bastard nature was that of an animal to be thrown into the river or a human being to be buried. it was never established whether it had really caused the death of the birds, but the newly married women did not bear the predicted monsters, nor did the intensity the heat decrease.
rebeca died at the end of that year. argénida, her lifelong servant, asked the authorities for help to knock down the door to the bedroom where her mistress had been locked in for three days, and they found her, on her solitary bed, curled up like a shrimp, with her head bald from ringworm and her finger in her mouth. aureli-ano segun-do took charge of the funeral and tried to restore the house in order to sell it, but the destruction was so far advanced in it that the walls became scaly as soon as they were painted and there was not enough mortar to stop the weeds from cracking the floors the ivy from rotting the beams.
that was how everything went after the deluge. the indolence of the people was in contrast to the voracity of oblivion, which little by little was undermining memories in a pitiless way, to such an extreme that at that time, on another anniversary of the treaty of neerlandia, some emissaries from the president of the republic arrived in macon-do to award at last the decoration rejected several times by colonel aureli-ano buendía, and they spent a whole afternoon looking for someone who could tell them where they could find one of his descendants. aureli-ano segun-do was tempted to accept it, thinking that it was a medal of solid gold, but petra cotes convinced him that it was not proper when the emissaries already had some proclamations and speeches ready for the ceremony. it was also around that time that the gypsies returned, the last heirs to melquíades' science, and they found the town so defeated and its inhabitants so removed from the rest of the world that once more they went through the houses dragging magnetized ingots as if that really were the babylonian wise men's latest discovery, and once again they concentrated the sun's rays with the giant magnifying glass, and there was no lack of people standing open-mouthed watching kettles fall and pots roll and who paid fifty cents to be startled as a gypsy woman put in her false teeth took them out again. a broken-down yellow train that neither brought anyone in nor took anyone out and that scarcely paused at the deserted station was the only thing that was left of the long train to which mr. brown would couple his glass-topped coach with the episcopal lounging chairs and of the fruit trains with one hundred twenty cars which took a whole afternoon to pass by. the ecclesiastical delegates who had come to investigate the report of the strange death of the birds and the sacrifice the wandering jew found father antonio isabel playing blind man's buff with the children, and thinking that his report was the product of a hallucination, they took him off to an asylum. a short time later they sent father augusto angel, a crusader of the new breed, intransigent, audacious, daring, who personally rang the bells several times a day so that the peoples spirits would not get drowsy, and who went from house to house waking up the sleepers to go to mass but before a year was out he too was conquered by the negligence that one breathed in with the air, by the hot dust that made everything old and clogged up, and by the drowsiness caused by lunchtime meatballs in the unbearable heat of siesta time.
with úrsula's death the house again fell into a neglect from which it could not be rescued even by a will as resolute and vigorous as that of amaranta úrsula, who many years later, being a happy, modern woman without prejudices, with her feet on the ground, opened doors and windows in order to drive away the rain, restored the garden, exterminated the red ants who were already walking across the porch in broad daylight, and tried in vain to reawaken the forgotten spirit of hospitality. fernanda's cloistered passion built in impenetrable dike against úrsula's torrential hundred years. not only did she refuse to open doors when the arid wind passed through, but she had the windows nailed shut with boards in the shape of a cross, obeying the paternal order of being buried alive. the expensive correspondence with the invisible doctors ended in failure. after numerous postponements, she shut herself up in her room on the date and hour agreed upon, covered only by a white sheet and with her head pointed north, and at one o'clock in the morning she felt that they were covering her head with a handkerchief soaked in a glacial liquid. when she woke up the sun was shining in the window and she had a barbarous stitch in the shape of an arc that began at her crotch and ended at her sternum. but before she could complete the prescribed rest she received a disturbed letter from the invisible doctors, who mid they had inspected her for six hours without finding anything that corresponded to the symptoms so many times and so scrupulously described by her. actually, her pernicious habit of not calling things by their names had brought about a new confusion, for the only thing that the telepathic surgeons had found was a drop in the uterus which could be corrected by the use of a pessary. the disillusioned fernanda tried to obtain more precise information, but the unknown correspondents did not answer her letters any more. she felt so defeated by the weight of an unknown word that she decided to put shame behind her and ask what a pessary was, and only then did she discover that the french doctor had hanged himself to a beam three months earlier and had been buried against the wishes the townspeople by a former companion in arms of colonel aureli-ano buendía. then she confided in her son josé arcadio and the latter sent her the pessaries from rome along with a pamphlet explaining their use, which she flushed down the toilet after committing it to memory so that no one would learn the nature of her troubles. it was a useless precaution because the only people who lived in the house scarcely paid any attention to her. santa sofía de la piedad was wandering about in her solitary old age, cooking the little that they ate and almost completely dedicated to the care of josé arcadio segun-do. amaranta úrsula, who had inherited certain attractions of remedios the beauty, spent the time that she had formerly wasted tormenting úrsula at her schoolwork, and she began to show good judgment and a dedication to study that brought back to aureli-ano segun-do the high hopes that meme had inspired in him. he had promised her to send her to finish her studies in brussels, in accord with a custom established during the time of the banana company, and that illusion had brought to attempt to revive the lands devastated by the deluge. the few times that he appeared at the house were for amaranta úrsula, because with time he had become a stranger to fernan-da and little aureli-ano was becoming withdrawn as he approached puberty. aureli-ano segun-do had faith that fernanda's heart would soften with old age so that the child could join in the life of the town where no one certainly would make any effort to speculate suspiciously about his origins. but aureli-ano himself seemed to prefer the cloister of solitude and he did not show the least desire to know the world that began at the street door of the house. when úrsula had the door of melquíades' room opened he began to linger about it, peeping through the half-opened door, and no one knew at what moment he became close to josé arcadio segun-do in a link of mutual affection. aureli-ano segun-do discovered that friendship a long time after it had begun, when he heard the child talking about the killing at the station. it happened once when someone at the table complained about the ruin into which the town had sunk when the banana company had abandoned it, and aureli-ano contradicted him with maturity and with the vision of a grown person. his point of view, contrary to the general interpretation, was that macon-do had been a prosperous place and well on its way until it was disordered and corrupted and suppressed by the banana company, whose engineers brought on the deluge as a pretext to avoid promises made to the workers. speaking with such good sense that to fernanda he was like a sacrilegious parody of jews among the wise men, the child described with precise and convincing details how the army had machine-gunned more than three thousand workers penned up by the station and how they loaded the bodies onto a two-hundred-car train and threw them into the sea. convinced as most people were by the official version that nothing had happened, fernanda was scandalized with the idea that the child had inherited the anarchist ideas of colonel aureli-ano buendía and told him to be quiet. aureli-ano segun-do, on the othand, recognized his twin brother's version. actually, in spite the fact that everyone considered him mad, josé arcadio segun-do was at that time the most lucid inhabitant of the house. he taught little aureli-ano how to read and write, initiated him in the study of the parchments, and he inculcated him with such a personal interpretation of what the banana company had meant to macon-do that many years later, when aureli-ano became part of the world, one would have thought that he was telling a hallucinated version, because it was radically opposed to the false one that historians had created and consecrated in the schoolbooks. in the small isolated room where the arid air never penetrated, nor the dust, nor the heat, both had the atavistic vision of an old man, his back to the window, wearing a hat with a brim like the wings of a crow who spoke about the world many years before they had been born. both described at the same time how it was always march there and always monday, and then they understood that josé arcadio buendía was not as crazy as the family said, but that he was the only one who had enough lucidity to sense the truth of the fact that time also stumbled and had accidents and could therefore splinter and leave an eternalized fragment in a room. josé arcadio segun-do had managed, furthermore, to classify the cryptic letters of the parchments. he was certain that they corresponded to an alphabet of forty-seven to fifty-three characters, which when separated looked like scratching and scribbling, and which in the fine hand of melquíades looked like pieces of clothing put out to dry on a line. aureli-ano remembered having seen a similar table in the english encyclopedia, so he brought it to the room to compare it with that of josé arcadio segun-do. they were indeed the same.
around the time of the riddle lottery, aureli-ano segun-do began waking up with a knot in his throat, as if he were repressing a desire to weep. petra cotes interpreted it as one more of so many upsets brought on by the bad situation, and every morning for over a year she would touch his palate with a dash of honey and give him some radish syrup. when the knot in his throat became so oppressive that it was difficult for him to breathe, aureli-ano segun-do visited pilar ternera to see if she knew of some herb that would give him relief. the dauntless grandmother, who had reached a hundred years of age managing a small, clandestine brothel, did not trust therapeutic superstitions, so she turned the matter over to her cards. she saw the queen of diamonds with her throat wounded by the steel of the jack of spades, and she deduced that fernanda was trying to get her husband back home by means the discredited method of sticking pins into his picture but that she had brought on an internal tumor because clumsy knowledge of the black arts. since aureli-ano segun-do had no other pictures except those of his wedding and the copies were all in the family album, he kept searching all through the house when his wife was not looking, and finally, in the bottom of the dresser, he came across a half-dozen pessaries in their original boxes. thinking that the small red rubber rings were objects witchcraft he put them in his pocket so that pilar ternera could have a look at them. she could not determine their nature, but they looked so suspicious to her that in any case she burned them in a bonfire she built in the courtyard. in order to conjure away fernanda's alleged curse, she told aureli-ano segun-do that he should soak a broody hen and bury her alive under the chestnut tree, and he did it with such good faith that when he finished hiding the turned-up earth with dried leaves he already felt that he was breathing better. for part, fernanda interpreted the disappearance as a reprisal by the invisible doctors and she sewed a pocket of casing to the inside of her camisole where she kept the new pessaries that son sent her.
six months after he had buried the hen, aureli-ano segun-do woke up at midnight with an attack coughing and the feeling that he was being strangled within by the claws of a crab. it was then that he understood that for all of the magical pessaries that he destroyed and all the conjuring hens that he soaked, the single and sad piece of truth was that he was dying. he did not tell anyone. tormented by the fear of dying without having sent amaranta úrsula to brussels, he worked as he had never done, and instead of one he made three weekly raffles. from very early in the morning he could be seen going through the town, even in the most outlying and miserable sections, trying to sell tickets with an anxiety that could only be conceivable in a dying man. "here's divine providence," he hawked. "don't let it get away, because it only comes every hundred years." he made pitiful efforts to appear gay, pleasant, talkative, but it was enough to see his sweat and paleness to know that his heart was not in it. sometimes he would go to vacant lots, where no one could see him, and sit down to rest from the claws that were tearing him apart inside. even at midnight he would be in the red-light district trying to console with predictions of good luck the lonely women who were weeping beside their phonographs. "this number hasn't come up in four months," he told them, showing them the tickets. "don't let it get away, life is shorter than you think." they finally lost respect for him, made fun of him, and in his last months they no longer called him don aureli-ano, as they had always done, but they called him mr. divine providence right to his face. his voice was becoming filled with wrong notes. it was getting out of tune, and it finally diminished into the growl of a dog, but he still had the drive to see that there should be no diminishing of the hope people brought to petra cates's courtyard. as he lost his voice, however, and realized that in a short time he would be unable to bear the pain, he began to understand that it was not through raffled pigs and goats that his daughter would get to brussels, so he conceived the idea of organizing the fabulous raffle the lands destroyed by the deluge, which could easily be restored by a person the money to do so. it was such a spectacular undertaking that the mayor himself lent his aid by announcing it in a proclamation, and associations were formed to buy tickets at one hundred pesos apiece and they were sold out in less than a week. the night of the raffle the winners held a huge celebration, comparable only to those of the good days of the banana company, aureli-ano segun-do, for the last time, played the forgotten songs of francisco the man on the accordion, but he could no longer sing them.
two months later amaranta úrsula went to brussels. aureli-ano segun-do gave her not only the money from the special raffle, but also what he had managed to put aside over the previous months and what little he had received from the sale of the pianola, the clavichord, and other junk that had fallen into disrepair. according to his calculations, that sum would be enough for her studies, so that all that was lacking was the price of her fare back home. fernanda was against the trip until the last moment, scandalized by the idea that brussels was so close to paris and its perdition, but she calmed down with the letter that father angel gave addressed to a boardinghouse run by nuns for catholic young ladies where amaranta úrsula promised to stay until her studies were completed. furthermore, the parish priest arranged for her to travel under the care of a group of franciscan nuns who were going to toledo, where they hoped to find dependable people to accompany her to belgium. while the urgent correspondence that made the coordination possible went forward, aureli-ano segun-do, aided by petra cates, prepared amaranta úrsula's baggage. the night on which they were packing one fernanda's bridal trunks, the things were so well organized that the school-girl knew by heart which were the suits and cloth slippers she could wear crossing the atlantic and the blue cloth coat with copper buttons and the cordovan shoes she would wear when she landed. she also knew how to walk so as not to fall into the water as she went up the gangplank, that at no time was she to leave the company of the nuns or leave cabin except to eat, and that for no reason was she to answer the questions asked by people of any sex while they were at sea. she carried a small bottle with drops for seasickness and a notebook written by father angel in his own hand containing six prayers to be used against storms. fernan-da made her a canvas belt to keep her money in, and she would not have to take it off even to sleep. she tried to give her the chamberpot, washed out with lye and disinfected with alcohol, but amaranta úrsula refused it for fear that her schoolmates would make fun her. a few months later, at the hour of his death, aureli-ano segun-do would remember her as he had seen for the last time as she tried unsuccessfully to lower the window of the second-class coach to hear fernanda's last piece of advice. she was wearing a pink silk dress with a corsage of artificial pansies pinned to her left shoulder, cordovan shoes with buckles and low heels, and sateen stockings held up at the thighs with elastic garters. her body was slim, her hair loose and long, she had the lively eyes that úrsula had had at her age and the way in which she said goodbye, without crying but without smiling either, revealed the same strength of character. walking beside the coach as it picked up speed holding fernanda by the arm so that she would not stumble, aureli-ano scarcely had time to wave at his daughter as she threw him a kiss with the tips of her fingers. the couple stood motionless under the scorching sun, looking at the train as it merged with the black strip of the horizon, linking arms for the first time since the day of their wedding.
on the ninth of august, before they received the first letter from brussels, josé arcadio segun-do was speaking to aureli-ano in melquíades' room and, without realizing it, he said:
"always remember that they were more than three thousand and that they were thrown into the sea."
then he fell back on the parchments and died with his eyes open. at that same instant, in fernanda's bed, his twin brother came to the end of the prolonged and terrible martyrdom of the steel crabs that were eating his throat away. one week previously he had returned home, without any voice, unable to breathe, and almost skin and bones, with his wandering trunks and his wastrel's accordion, to fulfill the promise of dying beside his wife. petra cotes helped him pack his clothes and bade him farewell without shedding a tear, but she forgot to give him the patent leather shoes that he wanted to wear in his coffin. so when she heard that he had died, she dressed in black, wrapped the shoes up in a newspaper, and asked fernanda for permission to see the body. fernanda would not let through the door.
"put yourself in my place," petra cotes begged. "imagine how much i must have loved him to put up with this humiliation."
"there is no humiliation that a concubine does not deserve," fernanda replied. "so wait until another one of your men dies and put the shoes on him."
in fulfillment of her promise, santa sofía de la piedad cut the throat of josé arcadio segun-do's corpse with a kitchen knife to be sure that they would not bury him alive. the bodies were placed in identical coffins, then it could be seen that once more in death they had become as identical as they had been until adolescence. aureli-ano segun-do's old carousing comrades laid on his casket a wreath that had a purple ribbon with the words: cease, cows, life is short. fernanda was so indignant with such irreverence that she had the wreath thrown onto the trash heap. in the tumult of the last moment, the sad drunkards who carried them out of the house got the coffins mixed up and buried them in the wrong graves.
八月里开始刮起了热风。这种热风不但窒息了玫瑰花丛，使所有的沼泽都干涸了，而且给马孔多生锈的锌板屋顶和它那百年杏树都撒上了一层灼热的尘土。下雨的时候，乌苏娜意识中突发的闪光是十分罕见的，但从八月开始，却变得频繁了。看来，乌苏娜还要过不少日子才能实现自己的诺言，在雨停之后死去。她知道自己给孩子们当了三年多的玩偶，就无限自怜地哭泣起来。她拭净脸上的污垢，脱掉身上的花布衣服，抖掉身上的干蜥蜴和癞蛤蟆，扔掉颈上的念珠和项链，从阿玛兰塔去世以来，头一次不用旁人搀扶，自己下了床，准备重新投身到家庭生活中去。她那颗不屈服的心在黑暗中引导着她。无论谁看到她那颤巍巍的动作，或者突然瞧见她那总是伸得与头一般高的天使似的手，都会对老太婆弱不禁凤的身体产生恻隐之心，可是谁也不会想到乌苏娜的眼睛完全瞎了。但这并没有妨碍乌苏娜发现，她从房子第一次改建以来那么细心照料的花坛，已被雨水冲毁了，又让奥雷连诺第二给掘过了，地板和墙壁裂开一道道缝，家具摇摇晃晃，全褪了色，房门也从铰链上脱落下来。家中出现了从未有过的消沉和沮丧的气氛。乌苏娜摸着走过一间间空荡荡的卧室时，传进她耳里的只是蚂蚁不停地啃蚀木头的磁哦声。蛀虫在衣柜里的活动声和雨天滋生的大红蚂蚁破坏房基的安全声。有一次，她打开一只衣箱，箱子里突然爬出一群蟑螂，里面的衣服几乎都被它们咬破了，她不得不求救似的把圣索菲娅.德拉佩德叫来。“在这样的废墟上怎能生活呢？”她说。“到头来这些畜生会把咱们也消灭的，”从这一天起，乌苏娜心里一刻也没宁静过。清早起来，她便把所有能召唤的人都叫来帮忙，小孩子也不例外。她在太阳下晒干最后一件完好无损的外套和一些还可穿的内衣，用各种毒剂突然袭击蟑螂，赶跑它们，堵死门缝和窗框上白蚂蚁开辟的一条条通路，拿生石灰把蚂蚁直接闷死在洞穴里。由于怀着一种力图恢复一切的狂热愿望，乌苏娜甚至来到那些被遗忘的房间跟前。她先叫人清除了一个房间里的垃圾和蜘蛛网，在这个房间里，霍·阿.布恩蒂亚曾绞尽脑汁，不遗余力地寻找过点金石。接着，她又亲自把士兵们翻得乱七八糟的首饰作坊整理一番；最后，她要了梅尔加德斯房间的钥匙，打算看一下里面的情况，可是霍.阿卡蒂奥第二在自己死亡之前是绝对禁止人们走进这个房间的。圣索菲娅.德拉佩德尊重他的意愿，试图用一些妙计和借口促使乌苏娜放弃自己的打算。但是老太婆固执己见，决心消灭房中偏僻角落里的虫子，毅然决然地排除了她碰到的一切困难，三天之后便达到了目的——打开了梅尔加德斯的房间。房间里发出冲鼻的臭气，乌苏娜抓住门框，才站稳了脚跟。然而她立即想起，这房间里放着为梅梅的女同学买的七十二只便盆，想起最初的一个雨夜里，士兵们为了寻找霍·阿卡蒂奥第二，搜遍了整座房子，始终没有找到。
“我的天啊！”她若看得见梅尔加德斯房间里的一切，准会这样惊叫一声。“我花了那么多力气教你养成整洁的习惯，可你却在这儿脏得象只猪。”
霍·阿卡蒂奥第二正在继续考证羊皮纸手稿。他那凌乱不堪、又长又密的头发垂到了额上，透过头发只望得见微绿的牙齿和呆滞的眼睛。听出曾祖母的声音，他就朝房门掉过头去，试图微笑一下，可他自己也不知怎的重复了乌苏娜从前讲过的一句话。
“你在想什么呢？”他叨咕道。“时光正在流逝嘛。”
“当然，”乌苏娜说，“可毕竟是…”
这时，她忽然想起奥雷连诺上校在死刑犯牢房里也曾这么回答过她。一想到时光并没有象她最后认为的那样消失，而在轮回往返，打着圈子，她又打了个哆嗦。然而这一次乌苏娜没有泄气。她象训斥小孩儿似的，把霍·阿卡蒂奥第二教训了一顿，逼着他洗脸、刮胡子，还要他帮助她完成房子的恢复工作。自愿与世隔绝的霍·阿卡蒂奥第二，想到自己必须离开这个使他得到宁静的房间就吓坏了。他忍不住叫嚷起来，说是没有什么力量能够使他离开这儿，说他不想看到两百节车厢的列车，因为列车上装满了尸体，每晚都从马孔多向海边驶去。“在车站上被枪杀的人都在那些车厢里，三千四百零八个。”乌苏娜这才明白，霍·阿卡蒂奥第二生活在比她注定要碰上的黑暗更不可洞察的黑暗中，生活在跟他曾祖父一样闭塞和孤独的天地里。她不去打扰霍·阿卡蒂奥第二，只是叫人从他的房门上取下挂锁，除留下一个便盆外，把其它的便盆都扔掉，每天到那儿打扫一遍，让霍·阿卡蒂奥第二保持整齐清洁，甚至不逊于他那长期呆在栗树下面的曾祖父。起先，菲兰达把乌苏娜总想活动的愿望看做是老年昏聩症的发作，勉强压住自己的怒火。可是就在这时，威尼斯来了一封信——霍·阿卡蒂奥向她说，他打算在实现终身的誓言之前回一次马孔多。这个好消息使得菲兰达那么高兴，她自己也开始从早到晚收拾屋子，一天浇四次花，只要老家不让她的儿子产生坏印象就成。她又开始跟那些没有见过的医生通信，并且把欧洲蕨花盆、牛至花盆以及秋海棠花盆都陈列在长廊上，很久以后乌苏娜才知道它们都让奥雷连诺第二在一阵破坏性的愤怒中摔碎了。后来，菲兰达卖掉了一套银制餐具，买了一套陶制餐具、一些锡制汤碗和大汤勺，还有一些锡制器皿；从此，一贯保存英国古老瓷器、波希米亚水晶玻璃器皿的壁橱，就显得很可怜了。可是乌苏娜觉得这还不够。“把门窗都打开吧，”她大声说。“烤一些肉，炸一些鱼，买一些最大的甲鱼，让外国人来作客，让他们在所有的角落里铺床，干脆在玫瑰花上撒尿，让他们坐在桌边，想吃多少就吃多少，让他们连打响嗝、胡说八道，让他们穿着大皮鞋径直闯进一个个房间，把到处都踩脏，让他们跟我们一起干他们愿干的一切事儿，因为我们只有这样才能驱除破败的景象。”可是乌苏娜想干的是不可能的事。她已经太老了，在人世间活得太久了，再也不能制作糖动物了，而子孙后代又没继承她那顽强的奋斗精神。于是，按照菲兰达的吩咐，一扇扇房门依然紧紧地闭着。
这时，奥雷连诺第二又把自己的箱子搬进了佩特娜·柯特的房子，他剩下的钱只够勉强维持全家不致饿死。有一次抽骡子彩票时赢了一笔钱，奥雷连诺第二和佩特娜·柯特便又买了一些牲畜，开办了一家简陋的彩票公司。奥雷连诺第二亲自用彩色墨水绘制彩票，竭力使它们具有尽可能令人相信的迷人模样，然后走家串户地兜售彩票。也许连他自己也没发现，不少人买他的彩票是出于感激的心情，大部分人则是出于怜悯心。然而，即使是最有怜们心的买主，也都指望花二十个生丁菲兰达那么高兴，她自己也开始从早到晚收拾屋子，一天浇四次花，只要老家不让她的儿子产生坏印象就成。她又开始跟那些没有见过的医生通信，并且把欧洲蕨花盆、牛至花盆以及秋海棠花盆都陈列在长廊上，很久以后乌苏娜才知道它们都让奥雷连诺第二在一阵破坏性的愤怒中摔碎了。后来，菲兰达卖掉了一套银制餐具，买了一套陶制餐具、一些锡制汤碗和大汤勺，还有一些锡制器皿；从此，一贯保存英国古老瓷器、波希米亚水晶玻璃器皿的壁橱，就显得很可怜了。可是乌苏娜觉得这还不够。“把门窗都打开吧，”她大声说。“烤一些肉，炸一些鱼，买一些最大的甲鱼，让外国人来作客，让他们在所有的角落里铺床，干脆在玫瑰花上撒尿，让他们坐在桌边，想吃多少就吃多少，让他们连打响嗝、胡说八道，让他们穿着大皮鞋径直闯进一个个房间，把到处都踩脏，让他们跟我们一起干他们愿干的一切事儿，因为我们只有这样才能驱除破败的景象。”可是乌苏娜想干的是不可能的事。她已经太老了，在人世间活得太久了，再也不能制作糖动物了，而子孙后代又没继承她那顽强的奋斗精神。于是，按照菲兰达的吩咐，一扇扇房门依然紧紧地闭着。
这时，奥雷连诺第二又把自己的箱子搬进了佩特娜·柯特的房子，他剩下的钱只够勉强维持全家不致饿死。有一次抽骡子彩票时赢了一笔钱，奥雷连诺第二和佩特娜·柯特便又买了一些牲畜，开办了一家简陋的彩票公司。奥雷连诺第二亲自用彩色墨水绘制彩票，竭力使它们具有尽可能令人相信的迷人模样，然后走家串户地兜售彩票。也许连他自己也没发现，不少人买他的彩票是出于感激的心情，大部分人则是出于怜悯心。然而，即使是最有怜们心的买主，也都指望花二十个生丁赢得一头猪，或者花三十二个生丁赢得一头牛犊。这种指望把大家搞得挺紧张，以致每星期二晚上佩特娜·柯特家的院子里都聚集了一群人，等待一个有幸被选出来开彩的小孩子刹那间从一只布袋里抽出中彩的号码。这种集会很快变成了每星期一次的集市。天一黑，院子里便摆了一张张放着食品和饮料的桌子，许多幸运的人愿意宰掉赢得的牲畜供大家享受，但是有个条件：别人得请些乐师来，并且供应伏特加酒；这样，奥雷连诺第二只好违背自已的意愿，重新拿起手风琴，并且勉强参加饕餐比赛。昔日酒宴上这些无聊的作法，使得奥雷连诺第二认识到，他以往的精力已经耗尽，过去那种主宰者和舞蹈家的创造才能也已枯竭。是的，他变了。有一天，他向 “母象”挑战，他夸口说他能承担一百二十公斤的重量，结果不得不减为七十八公斤，他那淳厚的脸庞，本来就由于喝醉了酒而肿胀起来，现在犹如扁平的甲鱼嘴脸，一位长就变得好似鬣蜥的嘴脸了。沮丧和疲惫混杂的神色也一直没从他的脸上消失过。可是佩特娜.柯特还从来没象现在这样强烈地爱过奥雷连诺第二，可能是因为她把他的怜悯和两人在贫穷中建立的友情当成了爱情。现在，他们恋爱用的旧床已经破得摇摇晃晃，逐渐变成了他们秘密谈心的地方，那些照出他们每个动作的镜子已经取下来卖掉，卖得的钱购买了一些专供抽彩用的牲畜，那些细布被单和能激起情欲的绒被也已经被骡子嚼坏。一对昔日的情人，两个因为失眠而感到痛苦的老人，每夭怀着一种纯洁的心情，直到深夜还精神抖擞，便把从前剧烈消耗体力的时间用来算票据账和钱。有时，他们一直坐到拂晓鸡啼，把钱分成若干小堆，一个个硬币不时从这一小堆挪到那一小堆，为的是这一小堆够菲兰达花销；那一小堆够阿玛兰塔·乌苏娜买一双皮鞋；另一小堆给圣索菲娅·德拉佩德，因为从混乱时期起她是从来没有更新过衣着的，还有一小堆够订购乌苏娜的棺材，以防她一旦去世，再一小堆够买咖啡，一磅咖啡每隔三星期就要上涨一个生丁；另一小堆够买砂糖，砂糖的甜味一天天变得越来越淡了，那一小堆够买雨停后还没晒干的劈柴；这一小堆够买绘制彩票的纸张和彩色墨水；而额外的一小堆够还四月份的一次彩票钱，因为那一次所有的彩票几乎都已卖掉，不料母牛犊身上出现了炭疽症状，只是奇迹般地抢救出了它的一张皮。奥雷连诺第二和佩特娜.柯特的接济带有一种明显的特点，总是把较大的一部分给菲兰达，他们这么做倒不是由于良心的谴责，也不是为了施舍，而是他们认为菲兰达的幸福比自己的更为珍贵。事实上，他俩自己也没意识到，他们关心菲兰达，简直就象关心自己的女儿一样，因为他们一直想有一个女儿，结果却没想成。有一次，为了给菲兰达买一条荷兰亚麻布台布，他们整整吃了三天老玉米粥。但不管他们怎么操劳，也不管他们赚了多少钱，使用了多少心计，每天夜里，得到他们爱护的天使照样累得一下子就睡着了，也不等他们为了使钱够维持生活，把钱的分配和硬币的挪动工作结束。谁知钱永远攒不够，在为失眠感到苦恼的时候，他们不禁自问，这世界上到底发生了什么事呀，为什么牲畜繁殖得不象早先那么多，为什么握在手里的钱竟会贬值，为什么不久前还能无忧无虑地点燃一叠钞票跳孔比阿巴舞（注：男人手执蜡烛的一种舞蹈。）的人，如今大声嚷嚷，说他们在光天化日下遭到了抢劫，虽然向他们索取的不过是可怜的二十个生丁，以便让他们参加一次用六只鸡作奖品的抽彩。奥雷连诺第二虽然嘴上小说，心里却在想，祸根并不在周围世界，而是在佩特娜·柯特那不可捉摸的隐蔽的内心里。在发大水时，不知什么东西挪动了一下位置，于是牲畜便染上了不孕症，钱也开始象水一样流掉。奥雷连诺第二不禁时这个秘密产生了兴趣，以深邃的目光窥视了一下佩特娜·柯特的内心，可是就在他寻找收获的时候，突然遇上了爱情。他试图从自私的目的出发激起佩特娜·柯特的热情，最后却是自己爱上了她。随着他那股柔情的增长，佩特娜·柯特也越来越强烈地爱着奥雷连诺第二。这一年的深秋，她又孩子般天真地恢复了对“哪儿有贫穷，哪儿就有爱情”这句谚语的信念。现在，回忆起往年穷奢极侈的酒宴和放荡不羁的生活，他们不免感到羞愧和懊悔，抱怨两人为最终获得这座无儿无女的孤独天堂所花的代价太大，在那么多年没有生儿育女的同居之后，他俩在热恋中奇迹般地欣然发现，餐桌边的相爱比床上的相爱毫不逊色。他们感到了这样一种幸福：虽然精力衰竭，上了年纪，却依然能象家兔那样嬉戏，象家犬那样逗闹。
从一次次抽彩中赚得的钱并没增加多少。最初，每星期有三天，奥雷连诺第二把自己关在经营牲畜的老办事处里，绘制一张又一张彩票，按照抽彩要发的奖，维妙维肖地绘出一头火红色的母牛、三头草绿色的乳猪或者一群天蓝色的母鸡，还悉心地用印刷体字母标上公司名称：“天意彩票公司”，那是佩特娜·柯特为公司起的名称。后来，他一星期不得不绘制二千多张彩票，不久他感到实在太累，便去定做了一些刻有公司名称、牲畜画像和号码的橡皮图章。从此，他的工作只是把图章在浸透了各种彩色墨水的印垫上蘸湿，再盖在一张张彩票纸上。在自己一生的最后几年里，奥雷连诺第二忽然想用谜语代替彩票上的号码，并在猜中谜语的那些人之间平分奖品。可是这种做法太复杂，再说，它又容易引起各种可能有的怀疑，在第二次试行之后，他就只好放弃了。
每天从清晨到深夜，奥雷连诺第二都在为巩固彩票公司的威望忙碌，他差不多没剩下什么时间去看望孩子们。菲兰达干脆把阿玛兰塔。乌苏娜送进一所一年只收六名女生的私立学校，却不同意小奥雷连诺去上市立学校。她允许他在房子里自由地游逛，这种让步已经太大了，何况当时学校只收合法出生的孩子，父母要正式举行过宗教婚礼，出生证明必须和橡皮奶头一起，系在人们把婴儿带回家的那种摇篮上，而小奥雷连诺偏偏列入了弃婴名单。这样，他就不得不继续过着闭塞的生活，纯然接受圣索菲娅.德拉佩德和乌苏娜在神志清醒时的亲切监督。在聆听了两个老太婆的各种介绍之后，他了解的只是以房屋围墙为限的一个狭窄天地。他渐渐长成一个彬彬有礼、自尊自爱的孩子，生就一种孜孜不倦的求知欲，有时使成年人都不知所措，跟少年时代的奥雷连诺上校不同的是，他还没有明察秋毫的敏锐目光，瞧起什么来甚至有些漫不经心，不时眨巴着眼睛。阿玛兰塔.乌苏娜在学校里念书时，他还在花园里挖掘蚯蚓，折磨昆虫。有一次，他正把一些蝎子往一只小盒子里塞，准备悄悄扔进乌苏娜的铺盖，不料菲兰达一把抓住了他；为了这桩事，她把他关在梅梅昔日的卧室里。他为了寻找摆脱孤独的出路，开始浏览起百科全书里的插图来。在那儿他又碰上了乌苏娜，乌苏娜手里拿着一束荨麻，正顺着一个个房间走动，一边往墙壁上稍稍撒点圣水。尽管她已经多次跟他相遇，却依然问他是谁。
“我是奥雷连诺·布恩蒂亚，”他说。
“不错，”她答道。“你已经到了开始学做首饰的时候啦。”
她又把他错当成了自己的儿子，因为代替暴雨使她神智清醒了一阵子的热风刚刚过去。老太婆的判断又不清楚了。走进卧室，她好象每一次都会遇到一些跟她交往过的人：佩特罗尼娜·伊古阿兰令人注目地穿着一条华丽的钟式裙，披着一块用珠子装饰的绣花披肩，都是她出入上流社会时的装束；瘫痪的外祖母特兰吉林娜·马里雅·米尼亚塔·阿拉柯克·布恩蒂亚庄重地坐在摇椅里，挥着一把孔雀羽毛扇；那儿还有乌苏娜的曾祖父——奥雷连诺·阿卡蒂奥·布恩蒂亚——穿着一套总督禁卫军的制服，她的父亲奥雷连诺·伊古阿兰（牛虻的幼虫一听到他作的祷文就会丧命），从牛背上摔下来；此外还有她那位笃信神灵的母亲；长着一条猪尾巴的堂弟霍塞·奥雷连诺·布恩蒂亚和他那些已故的儿子们——他们一个个都端坐在沿墙摆着的椅子上，仿佛不是来作客，而是来听安魂祈祷的。她开始娓娓动听地跟他们谈话，讨论一些在时间和地点上彼此都无联系的事情。从学校回来的阿玛兰塔·乌苏娜，看厌了百科全书的奥雷连诺·布恩蒂亚，走进她的卧宝时，也常常见她坐在床上大声地自言自语，在回忆死者的迷宫里瞎碰乱撞。有一次，她突然拉开吓人的嗓子，叫喊起来：“夫火啦！”喊声惊动了整座房子。事实上，她回忆起了自己四岁时见到的一次马厩失火。她就这样把过去跟现在混在一起。没死之前，她还有过两三次神智清醒的时候，但即使在那种时候，大概谁也不知道她讲的是此时此刻的感觉，还是对往事的回忆，乌苏娜渐渐枯槁了，还没死就变成了一具木乃伊，在她一生最后的几个月里，干瘪得犹如掉在睡衣里的一块黑李子干，她那只总是僵硬的手也变得好象长尾猴的爪子。她可以整整几天呆在那儿，一动也不动，圣索菲娅·德拉佩德只好把她摇了又摇，在确信她还活着之后，就让她坐在自己膝上，喂她一小匙糖水。这时，乌苏娜看上去就象一个获得新生的老太婆。阿玛兰塔·乌苏娜和奥雷连诺·布恩蒂亚架起她，在卧室里拍着她，把她放在祭坛上，想证实一下她是否只比耶稣婴儿时稍大一点儿。有一天晚上，他们甚至把她藏在储藏室的一只柜子里，在那儿，她差一点让老鼠吃掉。在复活节前的那个礼拜日，趁菲兰达正在做弥撒，他们又走进乌苏娜的卧室，一下子抬起她的头和脚。
“可怜的高祖母，”阿玛兰塔·乌苏娜脱口而出，“她老死了。”
乌苏娜猝然一动。
“我还活着哩，”她反驳了一句。
“你瞧，”阿玛兰塔·乌苏娜抑住笑声说：“呼吸都没有啦。”
“我不是在讲话吗