One Hundred Years of Solitude 百年孤独 Chapter 18

Aureli-ano DID NOT leave Melquíades' room for a long time. He learned by heart the fantastic legends of the crumbling ¹ books, the synthesis the studies of Hermann the Cripple, the notes on the science of demonology, the keys to the philosopher's stone, the Centuries of Nostradamus and his research concerning the plague, so that he reached adolescence ² without knowing a thing about his own time but with the basic knowledge of a medieval man. Any time that Santa Sofía de la Piedad would go into his room she would find him absorbed in his reading. At dawn she would bring him a mug of coffee without sugar and at noon a plate of rice slices of fried plantain, which were the only things eaten in the house since the death of Aureli-ano Segun-do. She saw that his hair was cut, picked off the nits, took in to his size the old clothing that she found in forgotten trunks, and when his mustache began to appear the brought him Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía's razor and the small gourd ³ he had used as a shaving mug. None of the latter's children had looked so much like him, not even Aureli-ano José, particularly in respect to the prominent cheekbones and the firm and rather pitiless line of the lips. As had happened to úrsula with Aureli-ano Segun-do when the latter was studying in the room, Santa Sofía de la Piedad thought that Aureli-ano was talking to himself. Actually, he was talking to Melquíades. One burning noon, a short time after the death of the twins, against the light of the window he saw the gloomy old man with his crow's-wing hat like the materialization of a memory that had been in his head since long before he was born. Aureli-ano had finished classifying the alphabet of the parchments, so that when Melquíades asked him if he had discovered the language in which they had been written he did not hesitate to answer., ,"Sanskrit," he said., ,Melquíades revealed to him that his opportunities to return to the room were limited. But he would go in peace to the meadows of the ultimate death because Aureli-ano would have time to learn Sanskrit during the years remaining until the parchments became one hundred years old, when they could be deciphered. It was he who indicated to Aureli-ano that on the narrow street going down to the river, where dreams had been interpreted during the time of the banana company, a wise Catalonian had a bookstore where there was a Sanskrit primer, which would be eaten by the moths ⁴ within six years if he did not hurry to buy it. For the first time in her long life Santa Sofía de la Piedad let a feeling show through, and it was a feeling of wonderment when Aureli-ano asked her to bring him the book that could be found between Jerusalem Delivered and Milton's poems on the extreme right-hand side of the second shelf of the bookcases. Since she could not read, she memorized what he had said and got some money by selling one of the seventeen little gold fishes left in the workshop, the whereabouts of which, after being hidden the night the soldiers searched the house, was known only by her and Aureli-ano., , ,There was no shortage of food in the house. The day after the death of Aureli-ano Segun-do, one of the friends who had brought the wreath with the irreverent inscription ⁷ offered to pay Fernanda some money that he had owed her husband. After that every Wednesday a delivery boy brought a basket of food that was quite sufficient for a week. No one ever knew that those provisions were being sent by Petra Cotes with the idea that the continuing charity was a way humiliating the person who had humiliated ⁸ her. Nevertheless, the rancor ⁹ disappeared much sooner than she herself had expected, and then she continued sending the food out of pride and finally out of compassion ¹⁰. Several times, when she had no animals to raffle ¹¹ off and people lost interest in the lottery ¹², she went without food so that Fernanda could have something to eat, and she continued fulfilling the pledge to herself until she saw Fernanda's funeral procession pass by., ,For Santa Sofía de la Piedad the reduction in the number of inhabitants of the house should have meant the rest she deserved after more than half a century of work. Never a lament ¹³ had been heard from that stealthy, impenetrable woman who had sown in the family the angelic seed of Remedios the Beauty and the mysterious solemnity of José Arcadio Segun-do; who dedicated ¹⁴ a whole life of solitude ¹⁵ and diligence to the rearing of children although she could barely remember whether they were her children or grandchildren, and who took care of Aureli-ano as if he had come out of her womb, not knowing herself that she was his great--grandmother. Only in a house like that was it conceivable for her always to sleep on a mat she laid out on the pantry floor in the midst of the nocturnal noise of the rats, and without telling anyone that one night she had awakened ¹⁶ with the frightened feeling that someone was looking at her in the darkness and that it was a poisonous snake crawling over her stomach. She knew that if she had told úrsula, the latter would have made her sleep in her own bed, but those were times when no one was aware of anything unless it was shouted on the porch, because with the bustle ¹⁷ of the bakery, the surprises of the war, the care of the children, there was not much room for thinking about other peoples happiness. -Petra Cotes whom she had never seen, was the only one who remembered her. She saw to it that she had a good pair of shoes for street wear, that she always had clothing, even during the times when the raffles ¹⁸ were working only through some miracle. When Fernanda arrived at the house she had good reason to think that she was an ageless servant, even though she heard it said several times that she was her husband's mother it was so incredible that it took her longer to discover it than to forget it. Santa Sofía de la Piedad never seemed bothered by that lowly position. On the contrary, one had the impression that she liked to stay in the corners, without a pause, without a complaint, keeping clean and in order the immense house that she had lived in ever since adolescence and that, especially during the time of the banana company, was more like a barracks than a home. But when úrsula died the superhuman diligence of Santa Sofía de la Piedad, her tremendous capacity for work, began to fall apart. It was not only that she was old and exhausted ¹⁹, but overnight the house had plunged ²⁰ into a crisis of senility. A soft moss ²² grew up the walls. When there was no longer a bare spot in the courtyard, the weeds broke through the cement the porch, breaking it like glass, and out of the cracks grew the same yellow flowers that úrsula had found in the glass with Melquíades' false teeth a century before. With neither the time nor the resources to halt the challenge of nature, Santa Sofía de la Piedad spent the day in the bedrooms driving out the lizards ²³ who would return at night. One morning she saw that the red ants had left the undermined foundations, crossed the garden, climbed up the railing, where the begonias had taken on an earthen color, and had penetrated ²⁴ into the heart of the house. She first tried to kill them with a broom, then with insecticides, and finally with lye, but the next day they were back in the same place, still passing by, tenacious ²⁵ and invincible ²⁶. Fernanda, writing letters to her children, was not aware of the unchecked destructive attack. Santa Sofía de la Piedad continued struggling alone, fighting the weeds to stop them from getting into the kitchen, pulling from the walls the tassels ²⁷ of spider webs which were rebuilt in a few hours, scraping off the termites. But when she saw that Melquíades' room was also dusty and filled with cobwebs even though she swept and dusted three times a day, and that in spite of her furious cleaning it was threatened by the debris ²⁸ and the air of misery ²⁹ that had been foreseen only by Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía and the young officer, she realized that she was defeated. Then she put on her worn Sunday dress, some old shoes of úrsula's, and a pair of cotton stockings that Amaranta úrsula had given her, and she made a bundle out of the two or three changes of clothing that she had left., ,The boat was tied up alongside a crumbling limestone jetty. 这条船停泊在一个摇摇欲坠的石灰岩码头边 。,Adolescence is the process of going from childhood to maturity.青春期是从少年到成年的过渡期。