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one hundred years of solitude
Many years later, facing the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to
remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. Macondo was thena village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank cañabrava a river of clear water
that ran along a bed of polished stones, white and enormous, like eggs
prehistoric. The world was so recentthat many things lacked names, and
señalarías mention was that finger. Every year, for the month of March a family
Gypsy their tents near the village, and with a great uproar of pipes and
kettledrumsthey would display new inventions. First they brought the magnet. A heavy gypsy, of
untamed beard and sparrow hands, who was presented with the name of Melquiades, made a
bold public demonstrationof what he himself called the eighth wonder of the wise
alchemists of Macedonia. He went from house to house dragging two metal ingots and all
world was amazed to see pots, pans, tongs and brazierstumble down from their site,
and beams creak from the desperation of nails and screws trying to emerge,
and even lost a long time appeared from where they had been
searched, and crawled in turbulentconfusion behind Melquiades' magical irons.
"Things have a life of its own-the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent, it's all about
waking up their souls. "José Arcadio Buendía, whose unbridledimagination always went beyond
the genius of nature and even beyond miracles and magic, thought it possible
use of that useless invention to extract gold from the earth. Melquiades, who was a
honestman, warned him: "That will not do." But José Arcadio Buendía did not believe in that
time in the honesty of gypsies, so he traded his mule and a pair of goats for the two
magnetized ingots. IguaránUrsula, his wife, who relied on those animals to broaden
the domestic equity stunted, unable to dissuade him. "Very soon have gold enough
to stone the house, "said her husband. For several months...