MANYYEARS LATER as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was toremember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. Atthat time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of ariver of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were whiteand enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many thingslacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. Everyyear during the month of March a family of ragged gypsies would set up theirtents near the village, and with a great uproar of pipes and kettledrums theywould display new inventions. First they brought the magnet. A heavy gypsy withan untamed beard and sparrow hands, who introduced himself as Melquíades, puton a bold public demonstration of what he himself called the eighth wonder ofthe learned alchemists of Macedonia. He went from house to house dragging twometal ingots and everybody was amazed to see pots, pans, tongs, and brazierstumble down from “their places and beams creak from the desperation of nailsand screws trying to emerge, and even objects that had been lost for a longtime appeared from where they had been searched for most and went draggingalong in turbulent confusion behind Melquíades’ magical irons. “Things have alife of their own,” the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. “It’s simply amatter of waking up their souls.” José Arcadio Buendía, whose unbridledimagination always went beyond the genius of nature and even beyond miraclesand magic, thought that it would be possible to make use of that uselessinvention to extract gold from the bowels of the earth. Melquíades, who was an”In March the gypsies returned. This time they brought a telescope and amagnifying glass the size of a drum, which they exhibited as the latestdiscovery of the Jews of Amsterdam. They placed a gypsy woman at one end of thevillage and set up the telescope at the entrance to the tent. For the price offive reales, people could look into the telescope and see the gypsy woman anarm’s length away. “Science has eliminated distance,” Melquíades proclaimed.”In a short time, man will be able to see what is happening in any place in theworld without leaving his own house.” A burning noonday sun brought out astartling demonstration with the gigantic magnifying glass: they put a pile ofdry hay in the middle of the street and set it on fire by concentrating thesun’s rays. José Arcadio Buendía, who had still not been consoled for thefailure of big magnets, conceived the idea of using that invention as a weaponof war. Again Melquíades tried to dissuade him, but he finally accepted the twomagnetized ingots and three colonial coins in exchange for the magnifyingglass. Úrsula wept “in consternation. That money was from a chest of gold coinsthat her father had put together ova an entire life of privation and that shehad buried underneath her bed in hopes of a proper occasion to make use of it.José Arcadio Buendía made no attempt to console her, completely absorbed in histactical experiments with the abnegation of a scientist and even at the risk ofhis own life. In an attempt to show the effects of the glass on enemy troops,he exposed himself to the concentration of the sun’s rays and suffered burnswhich turned into sores that took a long time to heal. Over the protests of hiswife, who was alarmed at such a dangerous invention, at one point he was readyto set the house on fire. He would spend hours on end in his room, calculatingthe strategic possibilities of his novel weapon until he succeeded in puttingtogether a manual of startling instructional clarity and an irresistible powerof conviction. He sent it to the government, accompanied by numerousdescriptions of his experiments and several pages of explanatory sketches; by amessenger who crossed the mountains, got lost in “measureless swamps, fordedstormy rivers, and was on the point of perishing under the lash of despair,plague, and wild beasts until he found a route that joined the one used by themules that carried the mail. In spite of the fact that a trip to the capitalwas little less than impossible at that time, José Arcadio Buendía promised toundertake it as soon as the government ordered him to so that he could put onsome practical demonstrations of his invention for the military authorities andcould train them himself in the complicated art of solar war. For several yearshe waited for an answer. Finally, tired of waiting, he bemoaned to Melquíadesthe failure of his project and the gypsy then gave him a convincing proof ofhis honesty: he gave him back the doubloons in exchange for the magnifyingglass, and he left him in addition some Portuguese maps and several instrumentsof navigation. In his own handwriting he set down a concise synthesis of thestudies by Monk Hermann, which he left José Arcadio so that he would be able tomake use of the astrolabe, the compass, and the sextant. José Arcadio “Buendíaspent the long months of the rainy season shut up in a small room that he hadbuilt in the rear of the house so that no one would disturb his experiments. Havingcompletely abandoned his domestic obligations, he spent entire nights in thecourtyard watching the course of the stars and he almost contracted sunstrokefrom trying to establish an exact method to ascertain noon. When he became anexpert in the use and manipulation of his instruments, he conceived a notion ofspace that allowed him to navigate across unknown seas, to visit uninhabitedterritories, and to establish relations with splendid beings without having toleave his study. That was the period in which he acquired the habit of talkingto himself, of walking through the house without paying attention to anyone, asÚrsula and the children broke their backs in the garden, growing banana andcaladium, cassava and yams, ahuyama roots and eggplants. Suddenly, without “warning, his feverish activity wasinterrupted and was replaced by a kind of fascination. He spent several days asif he were bewitched, softly repeating to himself a string of fearfulconjectures without giving credit to his own understanding. Finally, oneTuesday in December, at lunchtime, all at once he released the whole weight ofhis torment. The children would remember for the rest of their lives the augustsolemnity with which their father, devastated by his prolonged vigil and by thewrath of his imagination, revealed his discovery to them:
“Theearth is round, like an orange.”
ExcerptFrom: Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 1967 – One Hundred Years of Solitude