At lunchtime the house shook with the bustle
It was such a tumultuous and intemperate invasion that during the first days it was impossible to walk through the streets because of the furniture and trunks, and the noise of the carpentry of those who were building their houses in any vacant lot without asking anyone’s permission, and the scandalous…[Read more]

It was such a serious disappointment that
When phonographs became so popular that there was one in every house they were not considered objects for amusement for adults but as something good for children to take apart. On the other hand, when someone from the town had the opportunity to test the crude reality of the telephone installed in the [Read more]

He was one of the first who had been brought to the house
In February, when the sixteen sons of Colonel Aureliano Buendía returned, still marked with the cross of ashes, Aureliano Triste spoke to them about Rebeca in the tumult of the celebration and in half a day they restored the appearance of the house, changing doors and windows, painting the…[Read more]

Chance had it that it also coincided with carnival week
Colonel Gerineldo Márquez, besieged by pressures of all kinds, left his bed of a paralytic in order to persuade his former companion in arms. When the latter saw the rocking chair carried by four men appear and saw the friend who had shared his victories and defeats since youth sitting in it…[Read more]

He needed so much concentration to link scales
With her terrible practical sense she could not understand the colonel’s business as he exchanged little fishes for gold coins and then converted the coins into little fishes, and so on, with the result that he had to work all the harder with the more he sold in order to satisfy an exasperating…[Read more]

In spite of the visible hostility of the family
But Fernanda confessed to her that she was just letting two weeks go by before allowing the first contact with her husband. Indeed, when the period was over, she opened her bedroom with a resignation worthy of an expiatory victim and Aureliano Segundo saw the most beautiful woman on earth, with her…[Read more]

In the room of her sick mother
In the room of her sick mother, green and yellow under the powdery light from the windowpanes, she would listen to the methodical, stubborn, heartless scales and think that that music was in the world while she was being consumed as she wove funeral wreaths. Her mother, perspiring with five-o’clock fever, spoke to…[Read more]

He needed so much concentration to link scales
With her terrible practical sense she could not understand the colonel’s business as he exchanged little fishes for gold coins and then converted the coins into little fishes, and so on, with the result that he had to work all the harder with the more he sold in order to satisfy an exasperating…[Read more]

It was a long time before they were able to do so
Remedios the Beauty was proclaimed queen. ?rsula, who shuddered at the disquieted beauty of her great-granddaughter, could not prevent the choice. Until then she had succeeded in keeping her off the streets unless it was to go to mass with Amaranta, but she made her cover her face with a black…[Read more]

It was a delirious prosperity that even made him laugh
A few days later, in an attempt to clean out her courtyard, Petra Cotes exchanged the rabbits for a cow, who two months later gave birth to triplets. That was how things began. Overnight Aureliano Segundo be. came the owner of land and livestock and he barely had time to enlarge his…[Read more]

For almost two months he shared the woman with his brother
For almost two months he shared the woman with his brother. He would watch him, mix up his plans, and when he was sure that Jos?Arcadio Segundo was not going to visit their common mistress that night, he would go and sleep with her. One morning he found that he was sick. Two days later he…[Read more]

They would wake up at the same time
They would wake up at the same time, have the urge to go to the bathroom at the same time, suffer the same upsets in health, and they even dreamed about the same things. In the house, where it was thought that they coordinated their actions with a simple desire to confuse, no one realized what really was…[Read more]

It was an operation that was so timely
At dusk through her tears she saw the swift and luminous disks that crossed the sky like an exhalation and she thought that it was a signal of death. She was still under the chestnut tree, sobbing at her husband’s knees, when they brought in Colonel Aureliano Buendía, wrapped in a blanket that was stiff with…[Read more]

They’re things that a person writes to himself
They’re important papers,?she said.“Nothing of the sort,?the colonel said. “They’re things that a person writes to himself.?“In that case,?she said, “you burn them, colonel.?He not only did that, but he broke up the trunk with a hatchet and threw the pieces into the fire. Hours before, Pilar Ternera…[Read more]

His men looked at one another in consternation
His men looked at one another in consternation. “Excuse me, colonel,?Colonel Gerineldo Márquez said softly, “but this is a betrayal.?Colonel Aureliano Buendía held the inked pen in the air and discharged the whole weight of his authority on him.“Surrender your weapons,?he ordered.Colonel Gerineldo…[Read more]

You may be in command of your war
In the center of the chalk circle that his aides would draw wherever he stopped, and which only he could enter, he would decide with brief orders that had no appeal the fate of the world. The first time that he was in Manaure after the shooting of General Moncada, he hastened to fulfill his victim’s last Replica…[Read more]

Many times he would prolong the talk beyond the expected limit
At first those exchanges would determine the course of a flesh-and-blood war, the perfectly defined outlines of which told them at any moment the exact spot -where it was and the prediction of its future direction. Although he never let himself be pulled into the area of confidences,…[Read more]

I don’t have to tell you anything
His face, tanned by the salt of the Caribbean, had acquired a metallic hardness. He was preserved against imminent old age by a vitality that had something to do with the coldness of his insides. He was taller than when he had left, paler and bonier, and he showed the first symptoms of resistance to nostalgia.…[Read more]

The other was a blond boy with the same light eyes as his mother
The other was a blond boy with the same light eyes as his mother, whose hair had been left to grow long and curly like that of a woman. He entered the house with a great deal of familiarity, as if he had been raised there, and he went directly to a chest in ?rsula’s bedroom and…[Read more]

He found her in the dark bedrooms of captured towns
Remedios, who inherited her mother’s pure beauty, began to be known as Remedios the Beauty. In spite of time, of the superimposed Periods of mourning, and her accumulated afflictions, ?rsula resisted growing old. Aided by Santa Sofía de la Piedad, she gave a new drive to her pastry business and…[Read more]