The news that Remedios Buendía was going to be the sovereign ruler of the festival went beyond the limits of the swamp in a few hours, reached distant places where the prestige of her beauty was not known, and it aroused the anxiety of those who still thought of her last name as a symbol of subversion. The anxiety was baseless. If anyone had become harmless at that time it was the aging and disillusioned Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía, who was slowly losing all contact with the reality of the nation. Enclosed in his workshop, his only relationship with the rest of the world was his business in little gold fishes. One of the soldiers who had guarded his house during the first days of peace would go sell them in the villages of the swamp and return loaded down with coins and news. That the Conservative government, he would say, with the backing of the Liberals, was reforming the calendar so that every president could remain in power for a hundred years. That the concordat with the Holy See had finally been signed and a cardinal had come from Rome with a crown of diamonds and a throne of solid gold, and that the Liberal ministers had had their pictures taken on their knees in the act of kissing his ring. That the leading lady of a Spanish company passing through the capital had been kidnapped by a band of masked highwaymen and on the following Sunday she had danced in the nude at the summer house of the president of the republic. "Don't talk to me about politics," the colonel would tell him. "Our business is selling little fishes." The rumor that he did not want to hear anything about the situation in the country because he was growing rich in his workshop made úrsula laugh when it reached her ears. With her terrible practical sense she could not understand the colonel's business as he exchanged little fishes for gold coins and then converted the coins into little fishes, and so on, with the result that he had to work all the harder with the more he sold in order to satisfy an exasperating vicious circle. Actually, what interested him was not the business but the work. He needed so much concentration to link scales, fit minute rubies into the eyes, laminate gills, and put on fins that there was not the smallest empty moment left for him to fill with his disillusionment of the war. So absorbing was the attention required by the delicacy of his artistry that in a short time he had aged more than during all the years of the war, and his position had twisted his spine and the close work had used up his eyesight, but the implacable concentration awarded him with a peace of the spirit. The last time he was seen to take an interest in some matter related to the war was when a group of veterans from both parties sought his support for the approval of lifetime pensions, which had always been promised and were always about to be put into effect. "Forget about it," he told them. "You can see how I refuse my pension in order to get rid of the torture of waiting for it until the day I died." At first Colonel Geri-neldo Márquez would visit him at dusk and they would both sit in the street door and talk about the past. But Amaranta could not bear the memories that that man, whose baldness had plunged him into the abyss of premature old age, aroused in her, and she would torment him with snide remarks until he did not come back except on special occasions and he finally disappeared, extinguished by paralysis. Taciturn, silent, insensible to the new breath of vitality that was shaking the house, Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía could understand only that the secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude. He would get up at five in the morning after a light sleep, have his eternal mug of bitter coffee in the kitchen, shut himself up all day in the workshop, and at four in the afternoon he would go along the porch dragging a stool, not even noticing the fire of the rose bushes or the brightness of the hour or the persistence of Amaranta, whose melancholy made the noise of a boiling pot, which was perfectly perceptible at dusk, and he would sit in the street door as long as the mosquitoes would allow him to. Someone dared to disturb his solitude once.
"How are you, Colonel?" he asked in passing.
"Right here," he answered. "Waiting for my funeral procession to pass."
So that the anxiety caused by the public reappearance of his family name, having to do with the coronation of Remedios the Beauty, was baseless. Many people did not think that way, however. Innocent of the tragedy that threatened it, the town poured into the main square in a noisy explosion of merriment. The carnival had reached its highest level of madness and Aureli-ano Segun-do had satisfied at last his dream of dressing up like a tiger and was walking along the wild throng, hoarse from so much roaring, when on the swamp road a parade of several people appeared carrying in a gilded litter the most fascinating woman that imagination could conceive. For a moment the inhabitants of Ma-condo took off their masks in order to get a better look at the dazzling creature with a crown of emeralds and an ermine cape, who seemed invested with legitimate authority, and was not merely a sovereign of bangles and crepe paper. There were many people who had sufficient insight to suspect that it was a question of provocation. But Aureli-ano Segun-do immediately conquered his perplexity and declared the new arrivals to be guests of honor, and with the wisdom of Solomon he seated Remedios the Beauty and the intruding queen on the same dais. Until midnight the strangers, disguised as bedouins, took part in the delirium and even enriched it with sumptuous fireworks and acrobatic skills that made one think of the art of the gypsies. Suddenly, during the paroxysm of the celebration, someone broke the delicate balance.
"Long live the Liberal party!" he shouted. "Long live Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía!"
The rifle shots drowned out the splendor of the fireworks and the cries of terror drowned out the music and joy turned into panic. Many years later there were those who still insisted that the royal guard of the intruding queen was a squad of regular army soldiers who were concealing government-issue rifles under their rich Moorish robes. The government denied the charge in a special proclamation and promised a complete investigation of the bloody episode. But the truth never came to light, and the version always prevailed that the royal guard, without provocation of any kind, took up combat positions upon a signal from their commander and opened fire without pity on the crowd. When calm was restored, not one of the false bedouins remained in town and there were many dead and wounded lying on the square: nine clowns, four Columbines, seventeen playing-card kings, one devil, three minstrels, two peers of France, and three Japanese empresses. In the confusion of the panic José Arcadio Segun-do managed to rescue Remedios the Beauty and Aureli-ano Segun-do carried the intruding queen to the house in his arms, her dress torn and the ermine cape stained with blood. Her name was Fernanda del Carpio. She had been chosen as the most beautiful of the five thousand most beautiful women in the land and they had brought her to Macon-do with the promise of naming her Queen of Madagascar. úrsula took care of her as if she were her own daughter. The town, instead of doubting her innocence, pitied her candor. Six months after the massacre, when the wounded had recovered and the last flowers on the mass grave had withered, Aureli-ano Segun-do went to fetch her from the distant city where she lived with her father and he married her in Macon-do with a noisy celebration that lasted twenty days.