北营 -
IT RAINED FOR four years
eleven months
and o days. There were periods of drizzle during which everyone put on his full dress and a convalescent look to celebrate the clearing
but the people soon grew accustomed to interpret the pauses as a sign of redoubled rain. The sky crumbled into a set of destructive storms and out of the north came hurricanes that scattered roofs about and knocked down walls and uprooted every last plant of the banana groves. Just as during the insomnia plague
as ?rsula came to remember during those days
the calamity itself inspired defenses against boredom. Aureliano Segundo was one of those who worked hardest not to be conquered by idleness. He had gone home for some minor matter on the night that Mr. Brown unleashed the storm
and Fernanda tried to help him with a half-blown-out umbrella that she found in a closet. “I don"t need it
?he said. “I"ll stay until it clears.?That was not
of course
an ironclad promise
but he would acplish it literally. Since his clothes were at Petra Cotes"s
every three days he would take off what he had on and wait in his shorts until they washed. In order not to bee bored
he dedicated himself to the task of repairing the many things that needed fixing in the house. He adjusted hinges
oiled locks
screwed knockers tight
and planed doorjambs. For several months he was seen wandering about with a toolbox that the gypsies must have left behind in Jos?Arcadio Buendía"s days
and no one knew whether because of the involuntary exercise
the winter tedium or the imposed abstinence
but his belly was deflating little by little like a wineskin and his face of a beatific tortoise was being less bloodshot and his double chin less prominent until he became less pachydermic all over and was able to tie his own shoes again. Watching him putting in latches and repairing clocks
Fernanda wondered whether or not he too might be falling into the vice of building so that he could take apart like Colonel Aureliano Buendía and his little gold fishes
Amaranta and her shroud and her buttons
Jos?Arcadio and the parchments
and ?rsula and her memories. But that was not the case. The worst part was that the rain was affecting everything and the driest of machines would have flowers popping out among their gears if they were not oiled every three days
and the threads in brocades rusted
and wet clothing would break out in a rash of saffron-colored moss. The air was so damp that fish could have e in through the doors and swum out the windows
floating through the atmosphere in the rooms. One morning ?rsula woke up feeling that she was reaching her end in a placid swoon and she had already asked them to take her to Father Antonio Isabel
even if it had to be on a stretcher
when Santa Sofía de la Piedad discovered that her back was paved with leeches. She took them off one by one
crushing them with a firebrand before they bled her to death. It was necessary to dig c *** s to get the water out of the house and rid it of the frogs and snails so that they could dry the floors and take the bricks from under the bedposts and walk in shoes once more. Occupied with the many *** all details that called for his attention
Aureliano Segundo did not realize that he was getting old until one afternoon when he found himself contemplating the premature dusk from a rocking chair and thinking about Petra Cotes without quivering. There would have been no problem in going back to Fernanda"s insipid love
because her beauty had bee solemn with age
but the rain had spared him from all emergencies of passion and had filled him with the spongy serenity of a lack of appetite. He amused himself thinking about the things that he could have done in other times with that rain which had already lasted a year. He had been one of the first to bring zinc sheets to Macondo
much earlier than their popularization by the banana pany
simply to roof Petra Cotes"s bedroom with them and to take pleasure in the feeling of deep intimacy that the sprinkling of the rain produced at that even those wild memories of his mad youth left him unmoved
just as during his last debauch he had exhausted his quota of salaciousness and all he had left was the marvelous gift of being able to remember it without bitterness or repentance. It might have been thought that the deluge had given him the opportunity to sit and reflect and that the business of the pliers and the oilcan had awakened in him the tardy yearning of so many useful trades that he might have followed in his life and did not; but neither case was true
because the temptation of a sedentary domesticity that was besieging him was not the result of any rediscovery or moral lesion. it came from much farther off
unearthed by the rain"s pitchfork from the days when in Melquíades?room he would read the prodigious fables about flying carpets and whales that fed on entire ships and their crews. It was during those days that in a moment of carelessness little Aureliano appeared on the porch and his grandfather recognized the secret of his identity. He cut his hair
dressed him taught him not to be afraid of people
and very soon it was evident that he was a legitimate Aureliano Buendía
with his high cheekbones
his startled look
and his solitary air. It was a relief for Fernanda. For some time she had measured the extent of her pridefulness
but she could not find any way to remedy it because the more she thought of solutions the less rational they seemed to her. If she had known that Aureliano Segundo was going to take things the way he did
with the fine pleasure of a grandfather
she would not have taken so many turns or got so mixed up
but would have freed herself from mortification the year before Amaranta ?rsula
who already had her second teeth
thought of her nephew as a scurrying toy who was a consolation for the tedium of the rain. Aureliano Segundo remembered then the English encyclopedia that no one had since touched in Meme"s old room. He began to show the children the pictures
especially those of animals
and later on the mapsand photographs of remote countries and famous people. Since he did not know any English and could identify only the most famous cities and people
he would invent names and legends to satisfy the children"s insatiable curiosity.
Fernanda really believed that her hu *** and was waiting for it to clear to return to his concubine. During the first months of the rain she was afraid that he would try to slip into her bedroom and that she would have to undergo the shame of revealing to him that she was incapable of reconciliation since the birth of Amaranta ?rsula. That was the reason for her anxious correspondence with the invisible doctors
interrupted by frequent disasters of the mail. During the first months when it was learned that the trains were jumping their tracks in the rain
a letter from the invisible doctors told her that hers were not arriving. Later on
when contact with the unknown correspondents was broken
she had seriously thought of putting on the tiger mask that her hu *** and had worn in the bloody carnival and having herself examined under a fictitious name by the banana pany doctors. But one of the many people who regularly brought unpleasant news of the deluge had told her that the pany was di *** antling its dispensaries to move them to where it was not raining. Then she gave up hope. She resigned herself to waiting until the rain stopped and the mail service was back to normal
and in the meantime she sought relief from her secret ailments with recourse to her imagination
because she would rather have died than put herself in the hands of the only doctor left in Macondo
the extravagant Frenchman who ate grass like a donkey. She drew close to ?rsula
trusting that she would know of some palliative for her attacks. But her isted habit of not calling things by their names made her put first things last and use “expelled?for “gave birth?and “burning?for “flow?so that it would all be less shameful
with the result that ?rsula reached the reasonable conclusion that her trouble was intestinal rather than uterine
and she advised her to take a dose of calomel on an empty stomach. If it had not been for that suffering
which would have had nothing shameful about it for someone who did not suffer as well from shamefulness
and if it had not been for the loss of the letters
the rain would not have bothered Fernanda
because
after all
her whole life had been spent as if it had been raining. She did not change her schedule or modify her ritual. When the table was still raised up on bricks and the chairs put on planks so that those at the table would not get their feet wet
she still served with linen tablecloths and fine chinaware and with lighted candles
because she felt that the calamities should not be used as a pretext for any relaxation in customs. No one went out into the street any more. If it had depended on Fernanda
they would never have done so
not only since it started raining but since long before that
because she felt that doors had been invented to stay closed and that curiosity for what was going on in the street was a matter for harlots. Yet she was the first one to look out when they were told that the funeral procession for Colonel Gerineldo Márquez was passing by and even though she only watched it through the half-opened window it left her in such a state of affliction that for a long time she repented in her weakness.
She could not have conceived of a more desolate cortege. They had put the coffin in an oxcart over which they built a canopy of banana leaves
but the pressure of the rain was so intense and the streets so muddy that with every step the wheels got stuck and the covering was on the verge of falling apart. The streams of sad water that fell on the coffin were soaking the flag that had been placed on top which was actually the flag stained with blood and gunpowder that had been rejected by more honorable veterans. On the coffin they had also placed the saber with tassels of silver and copper
the same one that Colonel Gerineldo Márquez used to hang on the coat rack in order to go into Amaranta"s sewing room unarmed. Behind the cart
some barefoot and all of them with their pants rolled up
splashing in the mud were the last survivors of the surrender at Neerlandia carrying a drover"s staff in one hand and in the other a wreath of paper flowers that had bee discolored in the rain. They appeared like an unreal vision along the street which still bore the name of Colonel Aureliano Buendía and they all looked at the house as they passed and turned the corner at the square
where they had to ask for help to move the cart
which was stuck. ?rsula had herself carried to the door by Santa Sofía de la Piedad. She followed the difficulties of the procession with such attention that no one doubted that she was seeing it
especially because her raised hand of an archangelic messenger was moving with the swaying of the cart.