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One Hundred Years of Solitude 百年孤独 Chapter 12

"Look at the mess we've got ourselves into," Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía said at that time, "just because we invited a gringo to eat some bananas.",Aureli-ano Segun-do, on the other hand, could not contain his happiness over the avalanche 1 foreigners. The house was suddenly filled with unknown guests, with invincible 2 and worldly carousers, and it became necessary to add bedrooms off the courtyard, widen the dining room, and exchange the old table for one that held sixteen people, with new china and silver, and even then they had to eat lunch in shifts. Fernanda had to swallow her scruples 3 and their guests of the worst sort like kings as they muddied the porch with their boots, urinated in the garden. laid their mats down anywhere to take their siesta 4, and spoke 5 without regard for the sensitivities of ladies or the proper behavior of gentlemen. Amaranta, was so scandalized with the plebeian 6 invasion that she went back to eating in the kitchen as in olden days. Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía, convinced that the majority of those who came into his workshop to greet him were not doing it because of sympathy or regard but out of the curiosity to meet a historical relic 7, a museum fossil, decided 8 to shut himself in by barring the door and he was not seen any more except on very rare occasions when he would sit at the street door. úrsula, on the other hand, even during the days when she was already dragging her feet and walking about groping along the walls, felt a juvenile 9 excitement as the time for the arrival of the train approached. "We have to prepare some meat and fish," she would order the four cooks, who hastened to have everything ready under the imperturbable 10 direction of Santa Sofía de la Piedad. "We have to prepare everything," she insisted, "because we never know what these strangers like to eat." The train arrived during the hottest time of day. At lunchtime the house shook with the bustle 11 of a marketplace, and the perspiring 12 guests-who did not even know who their hosts were-trooped in to occupy the best places at the table, while the cooks bumped into each other with enormous kettles of soup, pots of meat, large gourds 14 filled with vegetables, and troughs of rice, and passed around the contents of barrels of lemonade with inexhaustible ladles. The disorder 15 was such that Fernanda was troubled by the idea that many were eating twice and on more than one occasion she was about to burst out with a vegetable hawker's insults because someone at the table in confusion asked her for the check. More than a year had gone by since Mr. Herbert's visit and the only thing that was known was that the gringos were planning to plant banana trees in the enchanted 16 region that José Arcadio Buendía and his men had crossed in search of the route to the great inventions. Two other sons Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía, with the cross of ashes on their foreheads, arrived, drawn 17 by that great volcanic 18 belch 19, and they justified 20 their determination with a phrase that may have explained everybody's reasons.,"We came," they said, "because everyone is coming.",Remedios the Beauty was the only one who was immune to the banana plague. She was becalmed in a magnificent adolescence 21, more and more impenetrable to formality, more and more indifferent to malice 22 and suspicion, happy in her own world of simple realities. She did not understand why women complicated their lives with corsets and petticoats, so she sewed herself a coarse cassock that she simply put over her and without further difficulties resolved the problem of dress, without taking away the feeling of being naked, which according to her lights was the only decent way to be when at home. They bothered her so much to cut the rain of hair that already reached to her thighs 24 and to make rolls with combs and braids with red ribbons that she simply shaved her head and used the hair to make wigs 25 for the saints. The startling thing about her simplifying instinct was that the more she did away with fashion in a search for comfort and the more she passed over conventions as she obeyed spontaneity, the more disturbing her incredible beauty became and the more provocative 26 she became to men. When the sons of Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía were in Macon-do for the first time, úrsula remembered that in their veins 27 they bore the same blood as her great-granddaughter she shuddered 28 with a forgotten fright. "Keep your eyes wide open," she warned her. "With any of them your children will come out with the tail of a pig." The girl paid such little attention to the warning that she dressed up as a man and rolled around in the sand in order to climb the greased pole, and she was at the point of bringing on a tragedy among the seventeen cousins, who were driven mad by the unbearable 30 spectacle. That was why none of them slept at the house when they visited the town and the four who had stayed lived in rented rooms at úrsula's insistence 31. Remedios the Beauty, however, would have died laughing if she had known about that precaution. Until her last moment on earth she was unaware 32 that her irreparable fate as a disturbing woman was a daily disaster. Every time she appeared in the dining room, against úrsula's orders, she caused a panic of exasperation 33 among the outsiders. It was all too evident that she was completely naked underneath 34 her crude nightshirt and no one could understand that her shaved perfect skull 35 was not some kind of challenge, and that the boldness with which she uncovered her thighs to cool off was not a criminal provocation 36, nor was her pleasure when she sucked her fingers after. eating. What no member of the family ever knew was that the strangers did not take long to realize that Remedios the Beauty gave off a breath of perturbation, a tormenting 37 breeze that was still perceptible several hours after she had passed by. Men expert in the disturbances 39 of love, experienced all over the world, stated that they had never suffered an anxiety similar to the one produced by the natural smell of Remedios the Beauty. On the porch the begonias, in the parlor 40, in any place in the house, it was possible to point out the exact place where she had been and the time that had passed since she had left it. It was a definite, unmistakable trace that no one in the family could distinguish because it had been incorporated into the daily odors for a long time, but it was one that the outsiders identified immediately. They were the only ones, therefore, who understood how the young commander of the guard had died of love and how a gentleman from a faraway lhad been plunged 41 into desperation. Unaware of the restless circle in which she moved, of the unbearable state intimate calamity 42 that she provoked as she passed by, Remedios the Beauty treated the men without the least bit malice and in the end upset them with her innocent complaisance 43. When úrsula succeeded in imposing 44 the commthat she eat with Amaranta in the kitchen so that the outsiders would not see her, she felt more comfortable, because, after all, she was beyond all discipline. In reality, it made no difference to her where she ate, and not at regular hours but according to the whims 45 appetite. Sometimes she would get up to have lunch at three in the morning, sleep all day long, and she spent several months with her timetable all in disarray 46 until some casual incident would bring her back into the order things. When things were going better she would get up at eleven o'clock in the morning and shut herself up until two o'clock, completely nude 47, in the bathroom, killing 48 scorpions 49 as she came out of her dense 50 prolonged sleep. Then she would throw water from the cistern 51 over herself with a gourd 13. It was an act so prolonged, so meticulous 52, so rich in ceremonial aspects that one who did not know well would have thought that she was given over to the deserved adoration 53 of her own body. For her, however, that solitary 54 rite 55 lacked all sensuality and was simply a way of passing the time until she was hungry. One day, as she began to bathe herself, a stranger lifted a tile from the roof and was breathless at the tremendous spectacle of her nudity. She saw his desolate 56 eyes through the broken tiles and had no reaction of shame but rather one of alarm., ,"I just wanted to see you," the foreigner murmured.,The stranger's face had a pained expression of stupor 57 and he seemed to be battling silently against his primary instincts so as not to break up the mirage 58. Remedios the Beauty thought that he was suffering from the fear that the tiles would break and she bathed herself more quickly than usual so that the man would not be in danger. While she was pouring water from the, cistern she told him that the roof was in that state because she thought that the bed of leaves had been rotted by the rain and that was what was filling the bathroom with scorpions. The stranger thought that her small talk was a way of covering her complaisance, so that when she began to soap herself he gave into temptation went a step further.,"Let me soap you," he murmured.,"Thank you for your good intentions," she said, "but my two hands are quite enough.","Even if it's just your back," the foreigner begged.,"That would be silly," she said. "People never soap their backs.",Higher still the snow was ready to avalanche.在更高处积雪随时都会崩塌 。,This football team was once reputed to be invincible.这支足球队曾被誉为无敌的劲旅。

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