“It’s like an earthquake.?
One January Thursday at two o’clock in the morning, Amaranta was born. Before anyone came into the room, ?rsula examined her carefully. She was light and watery, like a newt, but all of her parts were human: Aureliano did not notice the new thing except when the house became full of people. Protected by the confusion, he went off in search of his brother, who had not been in bed since eleven o’clock, and it was such an impulsive decision that he did not even have time to ask himself how he could get him out of Pilar Ternera’s bedroom. He circled the house for several hours, whistling private calls, until the proximity of dawn forced him to go home. In his mother’s room, playing with the newborn little sister and with a face that drooped with innocence, he found Jos?Arcadio.
?rsula was barely over her forty days?rest when the gypsies returned. They were the same acrobats and jugglers that had brought the ice. Unlike Melquíades?tribe, they had shown very quickly that they were not heralds of progress but purveyors of amusement. Even when they brought the ice they did not advertise it for its usefulness in the life of man but as a simple circus curiosity. This time, along with many other artifices, they brought a flying carpet. But they did not offer it as a fundamental contribution to the development of transport, rather as an object of recreation. The people at once dug up their last gold pieces to take advantage of a quick flight over the houses of the village. Protected by the delightful cover of collective disorder, Jos?Arcadio and Pilar passed many relaxing hours. They were two happy lovers among the crowd, and they even came to suspect that love could be a feeling that was more relaxing and deep than the happiness, wild but momentary, of their secret nights. Pilar, however, broke the spell. Stimulated by the enthusiasm that Jos?Arcadio showed in her companionship, she confused the form and the occasion, and all of a sudden she threw the whole world on top of him. “Now you really are a man,?she told him. And since he did not understand what she meant, she spelled it out to him.