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She had just finished saying it when Fernanda felt a delicate wind of light pull the sheets out of her hands and open them up wide. Amaranta felt a mysterious trembling in the lace on her petticoats and she tried to grasp the sheet so that she would not fall down at the instant in which Remedios the Beauty began to rise. úrsula, almost blind at the time, was the only person who was sufficiently calm to identify the nature of that determined wind and she left the sheets to the mercy of the light as she watched Remedios the Beauty waving goodbye in the midst of the flapping sheets that rose up with her, abandoning with her the environment of beetles and dahlias and passing through the air with her as four o'clock in the afternoon came to an end, and they were lost forever with her in the upper atmosphere where not even the highest-flying birds of memory could reach her.
The outsiders, of course, thought that Remedios the Beauty had finally succumbed to her irrevocable fate of a queen bee and that her family was trying to save her honor with that tale of levitation. Fernanda, burning with envy, finally accepted the miracle, and for a long time she kept on praying to God to send her back her sheets. Most people believed in the miracle and they even lighted candles and celebrated novenas. Perhaps there might have been talk of nothing else for a long time if the barbarous extermination of the Aureli-anos had not replaced amazement with honor. Although he had never thought of it as an omen, Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía had foreseen the tragic end of his sons in a certain way. When Aureli-ano Serrador and Aureli-ano Arcaya, the two who arrived during the tumult, expressed a wish to stay in Macon-do, their father tried to dissuade them. He could not understand what they were going to do in a town that had been transformed into a dangerous place overnight. But Aureli-ano Centeno andAureli-ano Triste, backed by Aureli-ano Segun-do. gave them work in their businesses. Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía had reasons that were still very confused and were against that determination. When he saw Mr. Brown in the first automobile to reach Macon-do-an orange convertible with a horn that frightened dogs with its bark--the old soldier grew indignant with the servile excitement of the people and he realized that something had changed in the makeup of the men since the days when they would leave their wives and children and toss a shotgun on their shoulders to go off to war. The local authorities, after the armistice of Neerlandia, were mayors without initiative, decorative judges picked from among the peaceful and tired Conservatives of Macon-do. "This is a regime of wretches," Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía would comment when he saw the barefoot policemen armed with wooden clubs pass. "We fought all those wars and all of it just so that we didn't have to paint our houses blue." When the banana company arrived, however, the local functionaries were replaced by dictatorial foreigners whom Mr. Brown brought to live in the electrified chicken yard so that they could enjoy, as he explained it, the dignity that their status warranted and so that they would not suffer from the heat and the mosquitoes and the countless discomforts and privations of the town. The old policemen were replaced by hired assassins with machetes. Shut up in his workshop, Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía thought about those changes and for the first time in his quiet years of solitude he was tormented by the definite certainty that it had been a mistake not to have continued the war to its final conclusion. During that time a brother of the forgotten Colonel Magnífico Visbal was taking his seven-year-old grandson to get a soft drink at one of the pushcarts on the square and because the child accidentally bumped into a corporal of police and spilled the drink on his uniform, the barbarian cut him to pieces with his machete, and with one stroke he cut off the head of the grandfather as he tried to stop him. The whole town saw the decapitated man pass by as a group of men carried him to his house, with a woman dragging the head along by its hair, and the bloody sack with the pieces of the child.
For Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía it meant the limits of atonement. He suddenly found himself suffering from the same indignation that he had felt in his youth over the body of the woman who had been beaten to death because she had been bitten by a rabid dog. He looked at the groups of bystanders in front of the house and with his old stentorian voice, restored by a deep disgust with himself, he unloaded upon them the burden of hate that he could no longer bear in his heart.
"One of these days," he shouted, I'm going to arm my boys so we can get rid of these shitty gringos!"
俏姑娘雷麦黛丝话刚落音，菲兰达突然发现一道闪光，她手里的床单被一阵轻风卷走，在空中全幅展开。悄姑娘雷麦黛丝抓住床单的一头，开始凌空升起的时候，阿玛兰塔感到裙子的花边神秘地拂动。乌苏娜几乎已经失明，只有她一个人十分镇定，能够识别风的性质——她让床单在闪光中随风而去，瞧见俏姑娘雷麦黛丝向她挥手告别；姑娘周围是跟她一起升空的、白得耀眼的、招展的床单，床单跟她一起离开了甲虫飞红、天竺牡丹盛开的环境，下午四点钟就跟她飞过空中，永远消失在上层空间，甚至飞得最高的鸟儿也迫不上她了。
外国人当然认为雷麦黛丝终于屈从了蜂王难免的命运，而她家里的人却想用升天的神话挽回她的面子。菲兰达满怀嫉妒，最终承认了这个奇迹，很长时间都在恳求上帝送回她的床单。马孔多的大多数土著居民也相信这个奇迹，甚至点起蜡烛举行安魂祈祷。大概，如果不是所有的奥雷连诺惨遭野蛮屠杀的恐怖事件代替了大家的惊讶，大家长久都不会去谈其他的事情。在某种程度上，奥雷连诺上校预感到了儿子们的悲惨结局，虽然没有明确这种感觉就是预兆。跟成群的外国人一起来到马孔多的，还有奥雷连诺。 塞拉多和奥雷连诺·阿卡亚，他俩希望留在马孔多的时候，父亲却想劝阻他们。现在，天一黑走路就很危险，他不明白这两个儿子将在镇上干些什么。可是，奥雷连诺·森腾诺和奥雷连诺·特里斯特在奥雷连诺第二的支持下，却让两个兄弟在自己的工厂里干活。奥雷连诺上校是有理由反对这种决定的，虽说他的理由还很不清楚。布劳恩先生是坐着第一辆小汽车来到马孔多的——这是一辆桔黄色的小汽车，装有可以折起的顶篷，嘟嘟的喇叭声吓得镇上的狗狺狺直叫；奥雷连诺上校看见这个外国佬的时候，就对镇上的人在这个外国佬面前的卑躬样儿感到愤怒，知道他们自从扔下妻子儿女、扛起武器走向战争以来，精神面貌已经发生了变化。在尼兰德停战协定以后，掌管马孔多的是一个失去了独立性的镇民，是从爱好和平的、困倦的保守党人中间选出的一些无权的法官。“这是残废管理处，”奥雷连诺上校看见手持木棒的赤足警察，就说。“我们打了那么多的仗，都是为了不把自己的房子刷成蓝色嘛。”然而，香蕉公司出现以后，专横傲慢的外国人代替了地方官吏，布劳恩先生让他们住在“电气化养鸡场”里，享受高等人士的特权，不会象镇上其他的人那样苦于酷热和蚊子，也不会象别人那样感到许多不便和困难。手执大砍刀的雇佣刽子手取代了以前的警察。奥雷连诺上校关在自己的作坊里思考这些变化，在长年的孤独中第一次痛切地坚信，没把战争进行到底是他的错误。正巧有一天，大家早已忘却的马格尼菲柯。 维斯巴尔的弟弟，带着一个七岁的孙子到广场上一个小摊跟前去喝柠檬水。小孩儿偶然把饮料洒到旁边一个警士班长的制服上，这个野蛮人就用锋利的大砍刀把小孩儿剁成了碎块，并且一下子砍掉了试图搭救孙子的祖父的脑袋。当几个男人把老头儿的尸体搬走的时候，全镇的人都看见了无头的尸体，看见了一个妇人手里拎着的脑袋，看见了一个装着孩子骸骨的、血淋淋的袋子。
这个景象结束了奥雷连诺上校的悔罪心情。年轻时，看见一个疯狗咬伤的妇人被枪托打死，他曾恼怒已极；现在他也象那时一样，望着街上一群麇集的观众，就用往常那种雷鸣般的声音（因他无比地憎恨自己，他的声音又洪亮了），向他们发泄再也不能遏制的满腔怒火。
“等着吧，”他大声叫嚷。“最近几天我就把武器发给我的一群孩子，让他们除掉这些坏透了的外国佬。”
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