One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez


   “Those are the ones who were born last night,?she aid.
   “Oh my God!?he said. “Why don’t you raffle off cows??
   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 overflowing barns and pigpens. It was a delirious prosperity that even made him laugh, and he could not help doing crazy things to release his good humor. “Cease, cows, life is short,?he would shout. ?rsula wondered what entanglements he had got into, whether he might be stealing, whether he had become a rustler, and every time she saw him uncorking champagne just for the pleasure of pouring the foam over his head, she would shout at him and scold him for the waste. It annoyed him so much that one day when he awoke in a merry mood, Aureliano Segundo appeared with a chest full of money, a can of paste, and a brush, and singing at the top of his lungs the old songs of Francisco the Man, he papered the house inside and out and from top to bottom, with one-peso banknotes. The old mansion, painted white since the time they had brought the pianola, took on the strange look of a mosque. In the midst of the excitement of the family the scandalization of ?rsula, the joy of the people cramming the street to watch that apotheosis of squandering. Aureliano Segundo finished by papering the house from the front to the kitchen, including bathrooms and bedrooms, and threw the leftover bills into the courtyard.
   “Now,?he said in a final way, “I hope that nobody in this house ever talks to me about money again.?
   That was what happened. ?rsula had the bills taken down, stuck to great cakes of whitewash, and the house was painted white again. “Dear Lord,?she begged, “make us poor again the way we were when we founded this town so that you will not collect for this squandering in the other life.?Her prayers were answered in reverse. One of the workmen removing the bills bumped into an enormous plaster statue of Saint Joseph that someone had left in the house during the last years of the war and the hollow figure broke to pieces on the floor. It had been stuffed with gold coins. No one could remember who had brought that life-sized saint. “Three men brought it,?Amaranta explained. “They asked us to keep it until the rains were over and I told them to put it there in the corner where nobody would bump into it, and there they put it, very carefully, and there it’s been ever since because they never came back for it.?Later on, ?rsula had put candles on it and had prostrated herself before it, not suspecting that instead of a saint she was adoring almost four bundled pounds of gold. The tardy evidence of her involuntary paganism made her even more upset. She spat on the spectacular pile of coins, put them in three canvas sacks, and buried them in a secret place, hoping that sooner or later the three unknown men would come to reclaim them. Much later, during the difficult years of her decrepitude, ?rsula would intervene in the conversations of the many travelers who came by the house at that time and ask them if they had left a plaster Saint Joseph there during the war to be taken care of until the rains passed.
pre:Chapter 9 next:Chapter 11