One Hundred Years of Solitude 百年孤独 Chapter 7

THE WAR was over in May. Two weeks before the government made the official announcement in a high-sounding proclamation, which promised merciless punishment for those who had started the rebellion, Colonel Aureliano Buendía fell prisoner just as he was about to reach the western frontier disguised as an Indian witch doctor. Of the twenty-one men who had followed him to war, fourteen fell in combat, six were wounded, and only one accompanied him at the moment of final defeat: Colonel Gerineldo Márquez. The news of his capture was announced in Macondo with a special proclamation. "He's alive," úrsula told her husband. "Let's pray to God for his enemies to show him clemency ¹." After three days of weeping, one afternoon as she was stirring some sweet milk candy in the kitchen she heard her son's voice clearly in her ear. "It was Aureliano, " she shouted, running toward the chestnut ² tree to tell her husband the news. "I don't know how the miracle took place, but he's alive we're going to see him very soon." She took it for granted. She had the floors of the house scrubbed and changed the position of the furniture. One week later a rumor ³ from somewhere that was not supported by any proclamation gave dramatic confirmation ⁴ to the prediction. Colonel Aureliano Buendía had been condemned ⁵ to death and the sentence would be carried out in Macondo as a lesson to the population. On Monday, at tenthirty in the morning, Amaranta was dressing ⁶ Aureliano José when she heard the sound a distant troop and the blast of a cornet one second before úrsula burst into the room with the shout: "They're bringing him now!" The troop struggled to subdue ⁷ the overflowing ⁸ crowd with their rifle butts ⁹. úrsula and Amaranta ran to the corner, pushing their way through, and then they saw him. He looked like a beggar. His clothing was torn, his hair and beard were tangled ¹⁰, and he was barefoot. He was walking without feeling the burning dust, his hands tied behind his back with a rope that a mounted officer had attached to the head of his horse. Along with him, also ragged ¹¹ and defeated, they were bringing Colonel Gerineldo Márquez. They were not sad. They seemed more disturbed by the crowd that was shouting all kinds of insults at the troops.,"My son!" úrsula shouted in the midst of the uproar ¹², and she slapped the soldier who tried to hold her back. The officer's horse reared. Then Colonel Aureliano Buendía stopped, tremulous, avoided the arms of his mother, and fixed ¹³ a stern look on eyes.,"Go home, Mama," he said. "Get permission from the authorities to come see me in jail.",He looked at Amaranta, who stood indecisively two steps behind úrsula, and he smiled as he asked her, "What happened to your hand?" Amaranta raised the hand with the black bandage. "A burn," she said, and took úrsula away so that the horses would not run her down. The troop took off. A special guard surrounded the prisoners and took them to the jail at a trot ¹⁴.,At dusk úrsula visited Colonel Aureliano Buendía in jail. She had tried to get permission through Don Apolinar Moscote, but he had lost all authority in the face of the military omnipotence ¹⁵. Father Nicanor was in bed with hepatic fever. The parents of Colonel Gerineldo Márquez, who had not been condemned to death, had tried to see him and were driven off with rifle butts. Facing the impossibility of finding anyone to intervene, convinced that her son would be shot at dawn, úrsula wrapped up the things she wanted to bring him and went to the jail alone.,The sentries ¹⁶ blocked her way. "I'm going in in any case," úrsula warned them. "So if you have orders to shoot, start right in." She pushed one of them aside and went into the former classroom, where a group of half-dressed soldiers were oiling their weapons. An officer in a field uniform, ruddy-faced, with very thick glasses and ceremonious manners, signaled to the sentries to withdraw.,"You must mean," the officer corrected with a friendly smile, "that you are the mother of Mister Aureliano Buendía." úrsula recognized in his affected ¹⁷ way of speaking the languid cadence ¹⁸ of the stuck-up people from the highlands.,There were superior orders that prohibited visits to prisoners condemned to death, but the officer assumed the responsibility of letting her have a fifteen-minute stay. úrsula showed him what she had in the bundle: a change of clean clothing, the short boots that her son had worn at his wedding, and the sweet milk candy that she had kept for him since the day she had sensed his return. She found Colonel Aureliano Buendía in the room that was used as a cell, lying on a cot with his arms spread out because his armpits were paved with sores. They had allowed him to shave. The thick mustache with twisted ends accentuated ¹⁹ the sharp angles of his cheekbones. He looked paler to úrsula than when he had left, a little taller, and more solitary ²⁰ than ever. He knew all about the details of the house: Pietro Crespi's suicide, Arcadio's arbitrary acts and execution. the dauntlessness of José Arcadio Buendía underneath ²¹ the chestnut tree. He knew that Amaranta had consecrated ²² her virginal widowhood to the rearing of Aureliano José and that the latter was beginning to show signs of quite good judgment ²⁴ and that he had learned to read and write at the same time he had learned to speak. From the moment In which she entered the room úrsula felt inhibited ²⁵ by the maturity ²⁶ of her son, by his aura of command, by the glow of authority that radiated from his skin. She was surprised that he was so well-informed. "You knew all along that I was a wizard," he joked. he added in a serious tone, "This morning, when they brought me here, I had the impression that I had already been through all that before." In fact, while the crowd was roaring alongside him, he had been concentrating his thoughts, startled at how the town had aged ²⁷. The leaves of the almond trees were broken. The houses, painted blue, then painted red, had ended up with an indefinable coloration.,"What did you expect?" úrsula sighed. "Time passes.",In that way the long-awaited visit, for which both had prepared questions and had even anticipated answers, was once more the usual everyday conversation. When the guard announced the end of the visit, Aureliano took out a roll of sweaty papers from under the cot. They were his poetry, the poems inspired by Remedios, which he had taken with him when he left, and those he had written later on during chance pauses in the war. "Promise me that no one will read them," he said. "Light the oven with them this very night." úrsula promised stood up to kiss him goodbye.,"I brought you a revolver," she murmured.,They addressed to the governor a plea for clemency.他们向州长提交了宽刑的申辨书。,We have a chestnut tree in the bottom of our garden.我们的花园尽头有一棵栗树 。